Though I have no desire to blog for fame or fortune (can you tell?!;)), I really do like using my blog as a glimpse into different high lights in life. I recently have both potty trained Ruby, and sleep trained Cora. As I was preparing for the sleep training, I visited my blog and looked back in time, to when I wrote about sleep training Ruby. It was incredibly helpful to remember how things went with her. It's amazing how time can erase some specific memories - I'm so glad I had it documented.
Today Cora Delight is 9 1/2 months old. While it is unbelievable, it is also such a fun stage. By the time Cora hit 8 months of age, I was starting to really feel super ready to get her sleeping through the night. Like I mentioned, I looked back to my post about sleep training Ruby. I couldn't believe I had waited until she was 12 1/2 months old to do that!
At 8 months Cora was really having a horrible time sleeping at night. Therefore I was having a horrible time sleeping at night! It is unbelievable now, but Cora had been waking up AT LEAST 5 times per night. She was still sleeping in our bedroom, half of the time in her pack n play, and half the time in our bed. She was sleeping for 1.5-2 hour stretches at that point, and life was getting kind of miserable for me. There was a lot of crying during those awake times, and only a bit of it was Cora. She had been in that pattern for probably a couple of months.
June 29th we buckled down and put the girl in the crib in her room. Brian and I committed to let her cry it out, with a 20 minute limit. That is ALWAYS the hardest part of sleep training - the first night. At about minute 15 I was about to go in and get her, but instead I tried hard to tune her out and focus on other things. Within the next 5 minutes she was asleep! I think this was around 8pm. I believe then she woke up around 2am, so I nursed her quickly and laid her back down. I heard her cry at 6am, so I nursed again and left. Then she slept until 8 or 9 am. I was shocked by how great of a victory this was! Even with her waking up at 2am, that was after a solid 6 hours!
The nights following were very similar. Down (without crying) at 8pm, awake quickly at 1 or 2am, again at 5 or 6am, then finally at 8 or 9am. Since then, we've had some great nights (solid 10-12 hours) and some rough ones. Each night has its own story, but I still consider her sleep trained at this point. Along with her having to get used to being in a different bed and room, we had to adjust Ruby to sleeping full time in her toddler bed. This was a bit of another challenge, because beforehand she had the option to sleep in the crib or toddler bed. Now Ruby is adjusted to her toddler bed every night, so it's a double victory there!
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