Sleep training...progress???

I must admit I was a big skeptic about this whole sleep training thing. Everyone says it just takes 3 or 4 days to see a difference and I thought, "Yeah, maybe for other babies, but they haven't met Charlie!" He has hated his crib his whole life, and I have always, always nursed him all the way to sleep. I just didn't have a lot of optimism about how this would go.

Anyway...we have done it for 4 nights now. The general idea is, we get him sleepy, and lay him in his crib and stay with him as long as it takes to fall asleep *on his own*. If he cries too much, we pick him up just long enough to stop the crying, and lay him back in the crib and try to soothe him. Repeat as long as needed. Supposedly this is better than just letting them "cry it out" because they can see you and know you are there the whole time. So..........Night #1 was the worst. He cried for an hour once he realized he had to stay in the crib. We must have picked him up and put him down dozens of times. Finally he fell asleep, holding his lamb blankie, watching the aquarium toy on the side of the crib. Night #2 was a little better. It lasted about 35 minutes and he was still not happy when he realized I wasn't going to get him out. I had to pick him up several times, but not as many as the first night. Night #3 was significantly better. He was actually happy when we first put him down and played on his own with his lamb while watching the fish. As he got sleepier, he fussed just a bit, but I did not even have to pick him up once! He eventually just turned his head to the side and fell asleep. Night #4, last night, was even better! It was 20 minutes, start to finish. He played at first, got sleepy, fought sleep a little (but no crying!), then just gave in with a big sigh. The bigger deal was that I didn't intervene much at all last night, just made sure he could reach his paci and didn't let him put the lamb over his face. But he basically did it all on his own. I am so proud!

I write all of this just so I will have a record of it later, not that I think all of you care about the gory details! I am trying not to be too triumphant because I am not convinced we are completely there yet. He is still waking up quite a bit overnight, and he cannot always go back to sleep on his own. We are trying to let him do it himself as much as possible, but sometimes we have to intervene. Hopefully that will get better too. We also still have daytime naps to contend with because currently he naps in his swing, when he naps at all, which until today has not been much (he slept almost 3 hours this morning, what gives?!) So we still have some work to do. But I have to say, I did not expect to see progress so quickly!





I will leave you with some pictures of Charlie playing with his Taggie ball, which he has just discovered, and of him getting tickled by Daddy right after his bath. I love this boy!!!