Crying it Out

Dear B,

We are starting something called 'The Sleep Sense Program' tonight. Unfortunately it is going to include a lot of crying on your part, and most likely mine too. Your dad and I love you so much and we do whatever we can to help you, include helping you fall asleep at night. This includes me feeding and burping you, getting you in your pjs and changing your diaper, then swaddling you, giving you your binki, and rocking you somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes. Then we put you in your crib and pray to the sleeping gods that you will stay asleep. Its about a 50/50 chance that you will stay asleep until you are ready to get up and eat at night. If you do wake up, then we go in there and rock you again. We repeat this anywhere from 1 - 5 times a night and it takes between 20 minutes and an hour and a half to get you to sleep at night. This is very stressful for us and wastes a lot of your sleep time. So, it is time you train yourself to fall asleep. Here we go.

This is what tonight is going to look like: I put you to bed and I am going to go check on you every ten minutes. I will stay in there about one minute each time and try to calm you by talking to you and patting your belly, rubbing your face, etc. Hopefully you won't cry for too long. When you get up at night I will let you cry for 10 minutes before going in there, in hopes that you will be able to put yourself back to sleep. Then I will go in and talk to you and try to calm you down until you go back to sleep. I still plan on feeding you once, which eliminates one feeding a night. I really hope this works.

I put you to bed at 6:57 and you laid quietly for 5 minutes then started to cry. It slowly grew into a scream. My first time "checking" on you I stayed for 9 min instead of 1, but you are much calmer with me in there, so I will probably be in there half the time with you. It's so hard to listen to you cry when I know I can rock you and put you to sleep, but hopefully this is better for both of us in the long run.

It's 7:26 and you stopped crying. Crossing my fingers. Nope. That lasted one minute.7:32 I went in and gave your binki and I think you may fall asleep. You are very tired and your eyes are closed. I can't imagine how this feels for you. Were suppose to take away all sleep props, which for you includes: nursing and/or rocking to sleep, swaddling, and your binki (and your swing, which I eliminated two days ago and you are doing ok without). I dont think I can stick with the no binki part. Lets see how you do using it and as long as I don't have to get up and give it to you at night it will be ok to fall asleep with, I think. Who knows.

I think your asleep. 35 minutes. Not too bad.

Love you!!!!!!!!!!!

Mom