My Child Has Been Ferberized!

Warning - this post will probably be boring to those of you who don't have kids or who have kids who are great sleepers, but I can't help but share about the great things happening in our sleeping world.

When Liam was about six weeks old we started sleep training him with a cry it out method. I was already following a type of schedule where I would nurse him, he would be awake for a little while and then when he started showing signs of getting sleepy, I would rock him for a bit and then lay him down in his crib and he would usually cry a bit and then go to sleep. At this point he was repeating this cycle about every 2 and a half to 3 hours. I remember when we got home from traveling at Christmas he started going right to sleep without crying and I felt like we had finally arrived at parenting bliss. It was amazing. Then, he learned how to roll over and that made him mad because he couldn't roll over the other way and we had to keep working at things. This period only served to confirm what I'd already thought about parenting - it often feels like one step forward and then two steps back.

Springtime came and we started traveling and then traveling even more during the summer. Most of the time while we were traveling Liam did pretty well sleeping in the pack n play, but unfortunately I got into some bad habits (nursing him to sleep, rocking him, etc., etc.) because it was so important to me that he get a good nap rather than let him cry for a long time. The problem with these bad habits was that when we got home, we didn't work to break them and go back to letting him cry himself to sleep.

About a month or so ago things took a turn for the worse when it came to his sleeping habits and I was a wreck. I thought at first he was teething. Nope. Then I thought he was old enough to move down to one afternoon nap a day. Nope. We tried that one day and he slept for 45 minutes all day long and that was awful. He apparently hadn't gotten the memo that when you only take one nap a day, it's supposed to be a good, long one. So I started rocking him to sleep again, patting him, really doing anything I could do to get him to go to sleep. Then during naptime I would race around like a mad woman trying to get things done only to have him wake up again 3o or 45 minutes later. Nothing was working and he would wake up screaming and cranky all day. I was crying, Liam was crying, it was probably raining, etc.

Enter a friend from church who randomly gave me a book called, Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems by Dr. Richard Ferber. She knew I was having problems and was kind enough to share this book, which I found out later she had picked up out of a free box at a used bookstore thinking, "why am I getting this book? I don't need it." God works in mysterious ways is all I have to say to that because how could she know that I needed it?

I started reading this book and as I began to understand the nature of sleep and sleep cycles I learned that I was actually creating more problems for Liam by rocking him and assisting him to sleep. See, at about four months babies start having sleep cycles like adults and when they get into a lighter sleep stage they may actually wake up a bit and need to learn to go back to sleep on their own. Think about how many times a night you wake up and adjust your pillow or blanket and go back to sleep. Babies need to learn to do this too. However, when you give them any kind of parental assistance in falling asleep they will wake up at this time, realize that the aid that put them to sleep is gone and they will freak out. Dr. Ferber compares it to losing your pillow in the middle of the night. Instead of going right back to sleep you realize your pillow is gone and you start to look for it and thereby wake yourself up even more. Going back to sleep on your own is actually a skill babies need to learn for life.

Dr. Ferber's method for correcting this problem is letting them cry, but going in occasionally, patting their backs, soothing them, but not picking them up. Then the baby learns that crying will only get them a brief visit from you and they can go to sleep just fine on their own. The first day you start out going in after 5 minutes of crying, then 10, then 15 and so on. The next day you go in at 10 minutes, 20 minutes, etc. Each day has progressively longer intervals of crying until eventually they go to sleep on their own. You do the same process for naptime, bedtime and the middle of the night crying. Liam is long past needing to eat in the middle of the night so this method doesn't exactly apply to very young babies.

It was very humbling to learn that I was actually Liam's problem with sleeping, but the method also gave me hope that he could learn to go to sleep on his own again. I knew he could do it -- he's done it many times before. But he is very stubborn (definitely not a trait he gets from his father!) and I was doubtful that this could work. We've also been struggling with him standing up in his bed and having a hard time laying down on his own.

There have definitely been times when it was hard -- an hour and a half of crying at bedtime was the worst it got -- but overall, this method has worked better than I could have hoped. Within 3 days Liam was going to sleep on his own for naptime, usually with just one visit from me to lay him down and give him his Lil' Bow Wow dog. Even better, he has been sleeping for an average of an hour and half for each nap. The first day this happened I sat in the kitchen and honestly did not know what to do with myself! I wasn't used to getting all my naptime goals finished and actually having downtime for myself. He wakes up happier and is happier all around during the day. I am a much more patient, happier mama during the day too.

We had to make some pretty major changes, mostly dealing with when I was nursing him. Before I was nursing him to sleep right before bed and he was up to nurse at least once in the night. We switched this with reading books, so I am still nursing him, but it's not the last thing we do before bed. Now he is going to bed awake, falling asleep on his own and sleeping totally through the night. I am also not getting up with him if he wakes up at 5:30 or 6, Rob is instead, so we can try to break the early morning nursing habit we got in to. The problem now though is that he wants to be up for the day at 6 which makes for a long morning. Dr. Ferber says this is the hardest habit to break so we will keep working at that.

I will say too that I prayed a lot about this. It is so hard not knowing how to help your child, especially when you can see what they need - sleep in this case - but they won't give in and sleep. God was very merciful first to give us a good resource we could understand and follow, and then second, really be with Liam and help him learn to sleep.

I'm sure this method won't work for everyone, nor will everyone have enough patience to try it. But we were honestly on our last thread of hope and this did work really well for us. I am thankful that this method did work for us and we will hopefully continue to have more success with it.

I just realized how long this post is...sorry! I'm happy to talk more about this method if you have more questions. And I promise my next post will be a little more interesting... :)