yes everyone shane is sleeping all night long, just 4 nights later! he went from being rocked to sleep and waking every 2 hours just to be rocked to sleep again. shane definitely had some tears, but in the long run 4 nights, each of which got progressively better, isn’t all that much time.
as i mentioned i had a phone consult with melissa before she began and gave her a few suggestions on what i thought would work for her situation. she followed by advice and at the same time tweaked it a bit to make it work for her and her comfort level. this is the perfect scenario, because you know your baby better than anyone else. i advised melissa to start putting shane down awake. he needs to learn the skill of self-soothing. teaching your child to sleep is an amazing thing. without sleep it creates a vicious cycle of fussing and overtired babies/kids, whom then don’t learn as much throughout the day because they are simply too exhausted to absorb anything. on top of that their brains grow more during their sleep, so it is extremely important to get them to sleep properly!
sorry about that side note, back to little shane. melissa decided to go ahead with night training first, as i mentioned in my “sleepless nights : shane 4 months” post. she used my nap training method for bedtime, which will work, but often takes babies longer to learn the self-soothing process. overall it is still a successful method to use. i told her to choose a time frame that she could handle him crying without going in. she needed to be consistent with her time and not give in. consistency is the key. she was to lay shane down soothed, drowsy, but awake. you are not to lay your baby down alseep, otherwise it defeats the purpose. that being said if your baby falls asleep feeding, no need to wake them! if shane were to cry for the time alloted, not fussing, than she could go back in to soothe. the sleep training process has many steps and details and for each child it is different due to different issues; such as, swaddling, soothers, age, etc.
by the first night, shane was already sleeping longer stretches and by night 4 he went down awake, got himself to sleep with no tears, and slept straight through until 6:45 am! congratulations to shane and his family! everyone in their household should be catching their zzz’s tonight!
if you have a baby that’s lacking good sleep…help can be on your way too!