Operation: Get Renee to Sleep - Part 2

I realize I never gave an update on my progress at getting Renee to sleep, so here it is along with the new plan implemented earlier this week.

Last month I told you about my plan to take away one of the three nursing sessions she woke up for in the middle of the night.  Which after a about a week of just rocking her back to sleep she just stopped waking up at 11pm.  Great progress right?  Well, kinda.  With that change in her night time schedule, two new things started to happen:  1) she moved her 3am wake-up to 2am and 2) she REFUSED to go back into her crib after I nursed her!

So, at 2am she would wake up, I would nurse her back to sleep and put her in her crib (used to work fine).  But now she would immediately wake up screaming as soon as her body touched the mattress.  So, I picked her up and did whatever I could to calm her down without nursing her again.  This entailed pacing the house, shushing, singing and rocking her until she would fall asleep again.  Then I would put her in her crib again and she would wake up screaming again, and the whole thing started over!   This process usually lasted an hour to an hour and a half and entailed 2 or 3 attempts at putting her back in her crib before she would stay and I could finally go back to bed.

Okay, so my original plan, although successful, kind of backfired as far as the overall picture of getting Renee to sleep better was concerned.  What to do next?  Well, with the holidays right around the corner, I was hesitant to make another big change until I knew we could have a more consistent schedule.  So, right after our crazy Christmas weekend, I started putting her to bed awake.  My thought being that if I could get her to be comfortable going to sleep on her own at bedtime, then maybe at our 2am nursing session she would be okay with just going back into her crib and not put up such a huge fight.  Also, I knew I needed to stop picking her up when she cried and so my plan was to just pat her back and shush and sing to her until she fell asleep.

This plan worked pretty well.  To keep her awake at bedtime I would read her a story while she was nursing, she can't fall asleep with all those cool pictures to look at :D  Then I would put her in her crib and pat her back and sing to her until she fell asleep, this usually took about 15 to 20 minutes.  But, it wasn't helping for the 2am nursing session, she still refused to go back to sleep.  I was spending way too long bent over her crib patting her, it was KILLING my back and I would end up just giving in and picking her up to rock her back to sleep!

HUH!!!  It was a rough week!

Okay, new plan, she needed to learn to got to sleep on her own and I just needed to stop nursing her in the middle of the night all together.  That was it, end of story, she's 10 1/2 months old Kelly, she won't starve!!!

So, on Sunday night, with Jeff's very persistent urging (to put it nicely), I put her to bed at 8pm and let her cry herself to sleep. Thankfully it only took 23 minutes, I wasn't going to let her go more than 25.  She woke up again at 10pm when Jeff went in to check on her (as if this whole process wasn't hard enough already) and then again at 2am (her normal time).  I let her cry for 10 minutes both times and, to my surprise, she barely resisted and went to sleep after about 6 or 7 minutes of patting her back and shushing her.  Not too shabby!

Monday night was even better.  She only cried for about 15 minutes when I put her to bed.  She woke up at 4am and was crying, but it was more like a whine/whimper, and she fell back asleep in 14 minutes without me going to her at all.  She woke up again for about a minute at 6am, and didn't get up until 8am.  Pretty good!

And last night, after her 15 minutes of crying to go to sleep initially, the only sounds she made all night were a few coughs and maybe a whimper or two.  She woke up at 6:50am.  Success!

The only side effect of this new sleeping arrangement has been that Renee is now incredibly clingy in the morning.  I can't even put her down for a minute without her screaming her head off!!  I'm sure it's really hard on her not having that extra cuddle time in the middle of the night any more, but hopefully she will get used to it soon :D  And now that we are all going to get a good night sleep, we will have plenty of energy for extra cuddle time during the day!