You may remember that I wrote a post about five months ago called What I Learned Through Sleep Training. In that post, I talk about how sleep training didn’t work for us. At the time, that was true. I worked hard at it for weeks and weeks, and eventually I gave up because it was causing way too much stress for me. I found myself becoming depressed, so we stopped sleep training.
But about three months later, Raylee was still waking several times a night, and although I wasn’t depressed, I was definitely sleep deprived. We just couldn’t take it anymore. We knew something had to change. That’s when we looked into the Ferber method. (Learn about this method here.) Finally, we decided to try it.
At the time, we had been rocking Raylee to sleep every night and then laying her down in the crib as slowly and carefully as possible to keep her asleep. Of course, it didn’t always work and she’d wake up and we’d have to continue rocking. It was exhausting.
So to begin this new sleep training, we spent about a week laying Raylee down in her crib once she was sleepy but not asleep. Then we’d rub her back until she fell asleep. We felt like this was a way to transition her to falling asleep on her own, without suddenly just putting her down and leaving. That would have been a major change for her. After a week of her falling asleep while we stood above the crib rubbing her back (but never picking her back up), we switched to the full out Ferber method way of sleep training.
If it weren’t for my husband, this never would have worked. It was torture hearing my daughter cry. My husband took over for me. He watched the monitor, he watched the clock. He was always the one to put her down at night and go back in to reassure her. He handled it all. For that, I am so thankful. I just had to keep myself busy until she was finally asleep. We tag-teamed middle of the night wake ups. I also did the Ferber method for nap times.
Thankfully, I talked to several other mamas who highly recommend the Ferber method. Only one person told me it didn’t work for them. So I held tight to the encouragement I got, and we stuck to it. After about three days, we began seeing improvements. After a week, Raylee was sleeping through the night. I dropped night feedings once I knew she could do it.
It’s now been two months since we did this type of sleep training. I’m happy to report that Raylee has slept through the night every night since. We still hear her wake up sometimes and she might whine a little or even cry for a minute or two, but she always puts herself back to sleep. We’ve never had to get up with her. She also goes to sleep very easily now. Our bedtime routine is fairly simple.
Our bedtime routine includes:
- Diaper change
- Pajamas
- Story/Milk
- Milk/Prayer
- Two songs
- Lay her down, and leave.
She’s almost always asleep within five minutes.
Naps are another story. She has always fought naps, so those are basically hit or miss. Some days she naps great, other days she fights sleep hard. But you win some, you lose some, right? I can handle nap time so much better now that I’m getting a full night’s sleep!
So I just wanted to update ya’ll on our experience with sleep training since it’s changed since my last post. I’m so thankful the Ferber method worked for us. My biggest advice to anyone who plans to try it is to get one or two friends who have done it and seen success and keep them on speed-dial. Having someone to answer my questions and just give me encouragement helped me through it so much.
Happy sleeping!
Check out some other posts:
- How I Survived the First Year of Motherhood
- What I Learned Through Sleep Training
- Encouragement for the Hard Mom Days
Be sure to follow along on Instagram too!