So.
Several months ago The Boy got sick. The Boy got off of his sleep schedule, and we were never able to get him back to the old schedule. The Boy, for several months, has been waking several times during the night. Lately, he will be awake for, literally, hours in the dead of night wanting to play.
It's difficult not to love the fact that he wants to hang out with us.
Still. We are exhausted. My exhaustion culminated on Monday, July 23rd when I couldn't get a particular computer do-dad to work at the office and I burst in to uncontrollable sobs. I'd only had about an hour and a half of sleep, after all. And it was not the first night of too-little sleep for me, The Working Dad, or The Boy. I ended up going home for the day and sleeping, using way too many hours of my ever-dwindling leave balance . . . needlessly, really.
When we first got The Boy on a sleep schedule, we didn't have many tears. I would simply put him in his bed and every time he stood up, I'd lay him back down until, eventually, he fell asleep. Then I left the room. Admittedly, this took a big chunk of the evening, but it would work eventually and we were proud that he was "sleeping through the night" around age seven to eight months.
But that was back when a night waking might go on for 30 minutes to an hour with a kid who was still learning to crawl. Hours-long night wakings with an out of control toddler have literally been wearing The Working Dad and me out . . . weakening us to the point that we actually were getting sick. It was affecting our ability to function at work and, indeed, The Working Dad and I were arguing in very irrational ways that I can only attribute to exhaustion.
Besides, the method we used before no longer worked with The Boy, now a toddler. If you put him in his bed, he would scream, not merely stand up and look at you, but scream. So in the last several weeks, we have employed a variety of ever-more elaborate techniques to get The Boy to sleep and those techniques had developed some bad sleep habits and associations for The Boy. Those inappropriate associations needed to be corrected in order for him to be able to have a restful night's sleep. He had become dependent upon, inter alia, The Working Dad dancing him to sleep to do-wop music, for instance. This was untenable in the long run. We needed a new way.
I had heard about the Ferber method, but had rejected it because I thought allowing a child to cry was cruel. Plus, it hurts me to let him cry like that. But desperation and not having any other answers led me to reconsider. Also, at our last pediatrician appointment at 15 months, The Boy's doctor said that we might need to employ a little "tough love" to get him back into the habit of regular sleep.
So. I bought Dr. Richard Ferber's book for Kindle. We implemented the strategies set forth in Chapter 4.
It has been like magic.
The first night, The Boy cried for a little over an hour. Here's how the schedule went down:
7:30 p.m. -- Bathtime.
8:00 p.m. -- Read books in The Boy's bedroom floor while listening to music. This part was just lovely and so much fun. The Boy, who is usually so rambunctious that getting him to sit still to read had been a real challenge, was very happy to sit in my lap and allow me to read several books to him. (We listened to Rock-a-bye Baby, Beatles, by the way, which was a shower gift from a high school friend and college sorority sister. Thanks, again, sweet friend who knows who she is!)
8:28 p.m. -- Music off, night light on. Cuddles.
8:30 p.m. -- Bedtime. Hugs. Kisses. "I love you. Night-night."
8:30:30 p.m. -- The Boy commences screaming.
I and/or The Working Dad went back to check on him, hug him, reassure him (but never lifting him out of the bed, per Dr. Ferber's instructions) that we were there at three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes and then . . . at 9:39 p.m., The Boy instantly fell silent. Standing at his door, you could hear the deep breathing of sleep. At about 10 p.m., I crept into his room to see him cuddling his lovey, sound asleep with his tushy in the air. It was amazing.
He awoke at 12:30 a.m. I checked on him at three minutes and five minutes, but he fell silent before the next seven minutes had passed. At 12:50 a.m., I again went in to check on him: sound asleep with his lovey, tushy in the air.
He awoke again at 2:30 a.m., but was silent again before we even made it to the three minute mark for the first check. Around 4 o'clock a.m., it was the same story.
The Working Dad woke him at 7 a.m., his normal waking time, and he wanted to go on sleeping, even though he had had between 9 and 10 hours sleep that night. This is a child who in recent days and weeks had been averaging 6ish hours of sleep a night. (Kids his age need between 12 and 15 hours sleep a day. He was no where near getting that much.)
We are now on Day 2. The evening ritual went down the same way as above, but this time, we waited five minutes before the first check. The second check was supposed to be seven minutes later, but he did not cry again after the first check. In fact, when I checked on him at the five minute mark, he was rubbing his eyes and he voluntarily laid down on his back to sleep. He did not cry again. I just crept into his room to check on him, and he is sound asleep.
I know that this method is controversial, and people think it is cruel to allow a child to cry. Hey, I thought it was cruel too. But The Boy is, we are told, among the easiest kids to put down for a nap at School. If this is the case, then he already has the skills to go to sleep on his own. It was The Working Dad and me, with our well-intentioned but apparently ill-advised interventions, that prevented that from happening.
(I will say this, though, I think that it is important to read the book, or at least heavily skim it, in order to understand what the sleep issues are and to determine whether your problem is merely bad habit, or something more serious. It's also important that you understand the method so that you can implement it properly. You might even want to throw in a call to your pediatrician if you're not sure whether it is a problem of habit or a health issue.)
Now, perhaps, it will all fall apart on Day 3, but so far, it seems to be working for us and we seem to be on our way to having a happy well-rested family again. I will report back in about a week with our one-week results.
