Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Sleep Training Baby Steps


This is how I found Sadie in her crib the other morning - perpendicular from the position I'd left her in the night before, wedged in the corner, and stuffing her blanket in her mouth.
My friend Mary posted on her blog a few weeks ago about how she is not the mother she expected to be. As for me, I expected to be the kind of mother who embraced sleep training. That was before I had ever heard one of my children cry of course. I've been avoiding sleep training. It's been easy to do with Jack sick. What kind of god forsaken parent lets their sick child cry it out until he falls asleep?
But with there being no sign of Jack being anything but sick for a while I've had to face the facts: life with infant twins who are not sleep trained could be hell, and these two cuties are going to be too old for sleep training soon. With that acceptance we've gently started sleep training. Our first step is to wean the babies off their sleep aids. We've had to say good bye to the swaddle. It's been frightening to retire the one technique that was guaranteed to put the babies to sleep, but we've gone 4 nights so far with limited or no swaddle and although it takes a lot longer to get them down, they seem to be sleeping longer.
Next week we may have to take the next big step and start putting the babies down in their cribs awake and letting them sooth themselves to sleep. I'm not looking forward it, but it would be nice if we could get through sleep training and all get a good night's rest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck Molly & J! I hope it all works like a charm, and ya'll are able to get plenty of rest. It sounds like you are off to a good start, and I like your plan.

Dharmama Meg said...

We're on the road in nc and I checked your blog to see your cuties and get an update. I'm glad to see you guys doing this. And even more glad that you got rid of the swaddles.one of my fave things is to see how tatum's sleeping before I hit the hay. Let the silly sleep positions begin!