Today I'm going to share my family's personal sleep story! I've been wanting to share it for a while because I had two very different experiences in sleep training my two sons.
*Please note that many of the methods (co-sleeping, Boppy use, swaddling after rolling, pacifier strings, etc) that I originally used to help my sons sleep are not considered safe according to the AAP and these are NOT methods that I would recommend today.
My first son, Ethan, came in late May and my husband and I were so excited! But we were also quickly overwhelmed. We realized we hadn't done much to prepare ourselves for what to do once Ethan actually got here!
May 2014
I remember being very confused that Ethan wouldn't just sleep in his crib when I laid him there. There wasn't even a scenario in my mind where Ethan wouldn't sleep well. Obviously, I was in for quite a surprise!
Our routine quickly turned to holding and rocking Ethan for every single sleep. My husband's permanent sleeping position at night became holding Ethan on the Boppy while sitting upright so he wouldn't roll over onto him.
Eventually we got Ethan transitioned to his crib for a majority of the time but he was tightly swaddled, propped up in the Boppy, and requiring rocking and a pacifier to fall asleep and stay asleep. It got so bad with the pacifier that I remember googling, "How to keep the pacifier in baby's mouth with a string."
Couple Ethan's sleep with the fact that I went back to work after 6 weeks off and I worked weird hours (early mornings and late nights), we were surviving, but barely. Then the 4 month sleep regression hit and what little sleep we were getting was ripped away from us.
One night my husband started reading and researching baby sleep online and he stumbled upon a sleep consultant's blog. She was extremely informative and straight-forward in her posts and we learned A LOT. In that one night we realized that everything we were doing to help our son sleep, was actually hindering his sleep!
We are pretty no-nonsense people and we were truly in a desperate place so we decided that the next night we would start sleep training and remove ALL of Ethan's props (the Boppy, the swaddle, the pacifier, and rocking to sleep). We laid Ethan down awake in his crib that night and left the room.
He cried, of course. He had only ever known this one way of falling asleep so obviously he was confused and frustrated and unhappy and also just plain exhausted! It wasn't pretty and looking back, we could have done things more gradual or with a better plan but we did what we could with the information we had.
The first night Ethan cried for 3 hours before finally falling asleep.
The second night Ethan cried for 30 minutes before falling asleep.
The third night Ethan fell asleep after fussing for 5-10 minutes and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours straight as a 4 month old!
My well-rested boy!
Can I get a Hallelujah?!
My husband and I were ecstatic. And we could not believe how quickly Ethan had adjusted, how much happier he was during the day, and how much more we enjoyed being parents once we were getting the sleep we needed! We became instant converts to sleep training!
And believe it or not, Ethan has slept with the same ease since he did on that third night and he's now 5 years old! Sure, we had some little blips here and there but on the whole, he has just been an amazing sleeper. I don't really remember going through any serious sleep regressions with him or anything like that.
When we transferred him to his toddler bed at age 3.5, there were some bumps and it took several nights to adjust to the new boundaries but he's handled that amazingly as well. Overall, Ethan has been a breeze ever since we sleep trained him at 4 months!
April 2016
Enter my second son, Campbell! When Campbell came around, I still wasn't a sleep consultant although I had done a fair share of reading blogs and books so I figured we would be good to go. We also went into his newborn phase with a different game plan.
I had decided to co-sleep with Campbell for the first 3-4 months and then sleep train him and transfer him to his crib. This seemed to work for a while but it was definitely not a long-term solution for us and I always had that nagging voice in the back of my head that this was not safe for him and that if anything ever happened I would never be able to forgive myself.
At the 4 month mark, I gladly moved Campbell out of my bed and into his crib and we had planned to sleep train him in the same way we did Ethan. We also were a little more knowledgeable about baby sleep schedules so we worked hard to implement a better schedule for him than we had for Ethan.
I remember the initial sleep training process going a bit smoother for Campbell than it did for Ethan and without too much crying, Campbell was able to fall asleep independently at bedtime and nap time.
Happy boy the morning after sleeping 12 hours straight
There were a couple lingering issues though.
Campbell was stuck at short 45 minute naps which meant that often his bedtime was really early and we struggled with that adjustment.
Also, Campbell would still occasionally wake up and cry for long periods of time overnight.
Sometimes it would be about an hour after bedtime, other times it would be in the early morning hours.
This went on for months and by the time he hit 7 months, I was begging my husband to just let me hire a sleep consultant. We finally did and through working with her, she was able to help us tweak Campbell's schedule so that it was more in tune with him, as well as suggesting that we try adding back in one night feed for him.
I was really hesitant to do this, after all, my 4 month old had slept 12 hours straight so why couldn't my 7 month do the same? But we had no sooner added it back in on those weird nights he would wake, than he stopped waking! It was amazing!
I can definitely remember going through several sleep regressions with Campbell, particularly the 2 year regression and we haven't yet made the transition to a toddler bed yet but we plan to around 3.5 years. That will surely be a little bumpier than Ethan's transition but I know we'll get through it!
Through this whole experience the second time around, I came to realize that Ethan had just been a really motivated little sleeper (kinda like me!) and Campbell was more sensitive to sleep (kinda like my husband), his schedule, any bit of light in the room, any noise outside of his room, basically everything!
Anyways, I wanted to share my own story with you for several reasons:
1. I wanted you to see where my journey and passion to help other families with sleep started.
2. I wanted to show you my two very different children who are both great sleepers but whose journeys to get there looked very different and that's okay.
3. I wanted to encourage you that even if your sleep training experience seems rockier or seems to take longer than your friends' experiences, it doesn't mean you won't get there with the right tools and information.