Sleep is For the Weak and Sickly... the Well Adjusted Weak and Sickly

[gnomi]

Muffin and Squeaker are now six months old, and we have been advised that it is now time to try to get them to sleep through the night. This is an idea with which mabfan and I are totally behind -- them sleeping through the night means *us* sleeping through the night. But there are many, many opinions about how to do this. And so I poll:

[Poll #1514593]

Comments

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I sleep trained the girls; what happened instead was roughly a year of co-sleeping with each of them. And then, frankly, I was so exhausted that I made sure they were relatively safe and contained, said, "No one ever died of crying" and passed right the hell out for eight hours.

There is a difference in their cries between I am crying to be upset/emotional distress/I like to cry/existential angst and cries that need Mommy attention. And you WILL know, it will cut through everything. Through sleep, through exhaustion, through medication and walls and Sweet God I can not possible get out of this bed, and your feet will fly like greased weasels. It's magic. But I think you have to be completely done in order for it to work, and you have a disadvantage in having a supportive spouse -- Tim was largely not *there* for this, and I had to get in touch with the magic sooner. Talk about a mixed blessing! But it is good there is two of you, for there is two of them!

Mind you, I didn't ghost that responsible parenting book yet. *grin* Much love and happy belated birthday

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

"and you have a disadvantage in having a supportive spouse"

Huh?

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Having you there is *WONDERFUL and POSITIVE*: It means Nomi's not forced into my sheer desperation technique (which works) because there is someone else there to love the kids and be useful. Which is good, but man, sometimes desperation achieves miracles.

This makes sense in my head, but I am expressing it badly out loud. My hubby was not an active part of raising the girls when they were wee, and hence I got to learn many parenting techniques that work best when there's only one parent using them. (Forgive me if this doesn't make it any better, I am not terribly coherent today)

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

YES, this.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I am already beginning to recognize the different cries. The fear I have is that they'll wake each other with the cries, or keep each other from falling asleep. I now not only ask them not to wake the baby, I have a whole "don't wake your sister" *song*. Which might even have an associated dance.

Much love and happy belated birthday

Thank you! And I hope you're feeling better from your illness of earlier this week.

[kmelion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, with the boys sharing a room, I go in when EN starts to cry. And since he doesn't take a pacifier or suck his fingers, out comes a boob.

Of course NS was a lousy sleeper and he didn't start sleeping through the night until he was 22 months old... when I was in the hospital after EN was born.

Once I start regular meals with EN and he's not just being breastfed I'll be cracking down on the 'going in at night' with him.

[eroticjames.livejournal.com]

There is no "method" that works. They start sleeping through the night when they're damn well ready to. When the spawn were in day care I would listen to parents discuss how it was going with their particular method and pretty much their kids didn't begin to sleep through the night any sooner than mine.

[introverte.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. I think "sleep training" merely gives parents the illusion of control.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I was one of those lucky parents that other parents want to throw things at.

Caroline started sleeping through the night at 3 months. By 6 months she had moved into her crib and was quite happy there.

Now getting her to nap was a whole different story. But I'll take the trade off.

[aunt-becca.livejournal.com]

Puppetmaker40 and I have similar experince. Ben was sleeping through the night very early on. I honestly think it was due to his size and appetite, but what do I know?

[moonpuppy61.livejournal.com]

No children but anecdotal stories agree: they will sleep through the night when they sleep through the night. Good luck.

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

I didn't sleep train. I did co-sleeping for about 2.5 years. We took a regular sized crib that could convert to toddler bed, removed one side, and attached it to our bed with wonder screws and bungie cord. It could pass all safety regulations, but changing the sheets was a pain :-)

I wasn't working at this time. I figured that if I could nap when he napped, then the whole sleep issue wasn't worth the bother. YMMV

What convinced me that it wasn't worth it, was reading that sleep training has to be re-done/re-inforced at each developmental milestone. As the kids learn to sit up, crawl, climb out of bed, etc. they get their own ideas about how to deal with the rules. And so you have to start again.

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

As an MIT dropout who is also intermittently writing a book about a single mother, I lurv the image of a co-sleep bed held together with wonder screws and bungie cord; I may have to steal that for a scene.

[elul-3.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes about the re-training. Every set of parents I know who did sleep training at 4-8 months would complain, from time to time, about how they have to teach Junior to sleep again b/c things got messed up from teething, illness, learning to walk, etc. Hardly seems worth it to me.

[betra.livejournal.com]

They now make a co-sleeper just like that. You could have patented your idea and been a millionaire, beat them to the punch.

[sharonaf.livejournal.com]

Oh, I interpreted sleep training very differently. I thought it was about getting them to sleep in the first place. Disregard my answer as to the age!

However, I did do some sleep training with Shlomo when he was about 10 months old and had gone from a manageable one wakeup/night to a less manageable 3x/night. My technique was to go in, pick him up, snuggle him, sing to him, do anything but nurse him (which wouldn't have been good for his teeth anyhow). The first night, I was awake with him howling at me from I think 1 to 3. Started taking breaks of a few minutes during it, when my ears were hurting and my eyes were drooping. Finally during one of the breaks, while I lay in my bed and hated myself, he fell asleep. After that it was maybe a half-hour the second night, and even less thereafter.

What someone above mentioned about re-training constantly is true. I relaxed the rules when he was sick or otherwise distressed, and every single time I did that I had to redo the entire training. It never took two hours again, but it was unpleasant.

As for kids waking each other up, mine don't seem to do so. Neither can fall asleep if the other's making noise, but once they're out, they're out, and will wake up in their own good time.

[gingicat]

Joshua has been great about sleep for ages, but now that he's older he plays with his cars or thinks about things that scare him and doesn't go to sleep. The past seven days have been... INTERESTING.

Eva is horrible about being left alone. Every once in a while she'll just settle down and sleep. Last night was the other end of the extreme; she cried for an hour, Daddy stayed in her room for an hour, she cried for 15 minutes and went to sleep.

Another difference in personality: Joshua has always been very easy to co-sleep with, so long as he's actually sleepy. Eva... even at 6 months she was impossible. Maybe co-sleeping longer would have made her more secure about sleeping alone; I don't know.

[elul-3.livejournal.com]

Not strictly true - we did a little of letting Devora cry at naptime starting when she was about...7 months old? Don't remember exactly. But it was clear to us that she needed it.

Around 14-15 months (after nightweaning at 13 months) we did a VERY modified Ferber check & console for Devora's night wakings - bring her into our room, settle her in a pack-n-play, and go to reassure her every few minutes until she seemed to be calming herself. If she stood up, she could see us in our bed. A few nights of this reduced her night-wakings (which formerly involved rocking her back to sleep) tremendously. I think around 16-20 months we had a lot of mornings of bringing her into our bed at her first-and-only wakeup around 5 AM, where we'd all happily go back to sleep. Can't remember how we broke that pattern.

Tried a similar C&C with Eliezer in our room. Bad idea.

Per Moxie (http://www.askmoxie.org/), some kids are tension-releasers - meaning that a few minutes of crying acts as white noise for their brains and helps them relax - and others are tension-increasers - which means, as you can guess, the opposite. Eliezer was and is DEFINITELY in the latter category.

After one night of our C&C experiment with him, during which he cried for 3 hours straight, we had THREE WEEKS of bedtime trouble. I had to sit by his crib patting his back for 10-15 minutes every night to get him to go to sleep...and this from a child who had been put down awake since he was about a month old. We eventually weaned him off the bedtime dependency, but we have never again made the mistake of trying crying-related sleep conditioning with him. (This is not to say we don't let him cry, in general. But it is clear that, even as a preschooler now, he responds much better to speedy intervention and a calming distraction - the "cool down seat" if he is being pushy or having a tantrum, a reminder of where to find his blankie if he is unsettled at night.)

Each of the kids went through long bouts of sleeping through the night (which we defined as "no wakeups before 5 AM") between 15 months and 22 months, but unfortunately they never seemed to do it on the same night. And then at 22 months the little light bulbs went on (or off) and they both started sleeping consistently for 10-12 hours without interruption. Our only wakeups now are from nightmares, leaky diapers, or illness-related discomfort.

[elul-3.livejournal.com]

What is "not strictly true" is my poll answer of "no."

[thesilia.livejournal.com]

this sounds like what happened with my nieces. the twins are the kind who cry it out and get off to sleep after a bit. the youngest gets all wound up by her own crying. what worked for the twins, accordingly, doesn't work at all for the youngest.

my sister did worry about one twin waking the other one, but they rarely did that. when they did, both of them would settle back in after a short stretch.

Sleep makes me irritable

[abbasegal.livejournal.com]

We have co-sleeped with all our kids. At between 12 and 18 months we move them to their own bed (initially a mattress or futon on the floor in the "kids room" -- we got rid of the crib after kid 1). Before the transition, Ima does nighttime dealings with kids (i.e. usually just a feed, occasionalyl a change). After the transition, it becomes abba's job to cuddle a fussy kid back to sleep (or to return her/him to bed after s/he wanders in).

With number 4, we may make adjustments to this pattern, since this is the first time steps have been part of the equation (previously we always were on a single level). But I am sure it will take the same general form.

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

I was really fortunate that my kids started sleeping through the night by the time I had to go back to work after enjoying 3 months of maternity leave.

I haven't been on LJ much, but belated congratulations on the birth of your twins.

[prettypammie.livejournal.com]

Both mine started sleeping through the night when they were ready, around 2-3 months. That doesn't mean they never woke up again - N wakes up at night if she is sick or teething. Ibuprofen at bedtime often helps her stay asleep. Unlike Q, N was in a co-sleeper and her crib is still in our room. I can take care of her without really waking up, and some mornings I'm not sure if I was up with her or not. If I wake up and she's in the bed w/us it's usually a good clue.
Having twins definitely makes it more tricky. I think all babies are different, and all parents experiment until they find what works best for their baby.
BTW, just when you thought they were truly reliable sleepers, the 4yo nightmares start. :)

-Pam

[eal.livejournal.com]

You know I'm no help on this one. Both of mine started sleeping through the night on their own . . . early. And both of them sleep like Phil, so once they're out you could set off a bomb next to them and they wouldn't hear it. Although, apparently, Phil's sleep is not total. He DID wake up when I tripped over Sam last weekend. I'm thinking my scream of pain coupled with her very loud moan got through his sleep. She and I are recovering slowly and he's still muttering about the two minutes of sleep he lost making sure that we were both relatively uninjured (as in not requiring emergency services of some type).

I did use some of the ideas from The Baby Whisperer to help with soothing and such, but actual sleep training? Not so much.

And now that B is four and roaming on his own some, well . . . he goes to sleep when he's ready. Though in his case, I've found encouraging him to play outside as much as he wants really helps with the whole falling asleep process.

[betra.livejournal.com]

The thing is, that if they can do it they will. If something makes them wake up, they won't. We co-slept both kids, but M was kicked out to the crib because she was too tall for the co-sleeper, and F was kicked out because he was too noisy - grunting and snoring and flopping all over the place.

Neither co-slept more than 6 months or so. I think F only got 3, the noisy little bugger.

We started them out with napping in the crib, first, so they could get used to it, and have positive feelings about sleeping there. You know how it is when they need that nap and just collapse on your shoulder. You can put them ANYwhere to sleep.

Just don't backslide, whatever happens. Once you start putting them down in the crib for the whole night, try to make them stay there...unless the screaming is making the neighbors throw rocks and stuff. But put them back if you can, once they have calmed down.

HUG you can do it. THEY can do it.

[celli]

I just asked my mom, and she said we didn't wake each other up (we were in separate cribs, but still). She says, "Maybe I was just really quick at grabbing whichever one woke up first."

She also says she remembers the exact day we slept through the night--Christmas Day 1975. We were just six months old, and she says she woke up anyway, because she was convinced soemthing was wrong.

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

Can't say much firsthand, but my parents tell me that I slept through the night at 6 weeks. They were amazed, but then, I had a big appetite from the start, I ate more milk than any of the other babies in the incubator. Of course, I was also larger than the other babies, my problems stemming from being born late rather than early.

So I guess I put away enough milk to get myself through the night.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

I got lucky and got sleepers. But little things helped. No nightlight, a cool room, white noise (fan in summer humidifier in winter), a crib misc box so they could turn music on to entertain themselves (I still hear Finn's go on in the middle of the night sometimes).

I'd let them cry at first for five minutes, then a few days later ten, then fifteen, etc. When I did go in, I would rub their backs, sing, whatever, but never take them out of the crib, never turn ay lights on, etc. So, basically, remind them I'm there, that they are safe, tell them they should be sleeping, and then leave the room. After going in once, I wouldn't go in again. It did work. I think it was harder on Mommy than it was on them. :)