Sleep Train

I know it sounds awful.. but it works. The past few months have been an absolute nightmare with Rosalie's sleeping.. and I'm sure everyone knows that from constantly hearing me complain about lack of sleep. I knew it was time we tried something new, so I started researching and I came across study after study by doctors saying you need to "sleep train" your kids. Basically, it's getting your baby to bed while they are still awake and teaches them to put themselves to sleep. You need to establish a routine, which we've always had, but it was apparently a bad routine lol. Even though you may think a baby needs rocked to sleep.. you are only hurting yourself in the long run. If they wake up in the middle of the night crying, see if they will go back to sleep on their own. If they don't, take them out of their crib to calm them, then lay them back down. If they continue to scream even after you have them picked up, them maybe they just are hungry. If they are, they will eat at least 4 oz. If they only eat 1 or 2 oz, then they are just sucking to put themselves back to sleep.

So our first night of trying this new method.. Rosalie got her bath and played for an hour or so. She started looking tired I got her a bottle and after she finished the bottle I took her straight to bed. She looked so tired. As soon as she hit the crib she was up, buzzing around, talkin, squealing, and spitting. She did this for 45 minutes.. then she got whiney. The whines turned into cries. When she started crying I went up and picked her up, calmed her down, laid her down, she grabbed her blank, rolled over and went to sleep. She slept the entire night. It was the first time since she was like 3 months old. It. Was. Awesome.

Second night rolls around. We do the same routine. This time, when Rosalie hit the bed, she only buzzed around for about 5 minutes and then crashed. She slept the entire night again.

Third night. Rosalie woke up around 1:00 screaming. She was hungry.. She ate an entire bottle and zonked and slept til like 6:30. Not bad.

Fourth night. Rosalie woke up around 2:00 screaming. She ate a bottle and slept til 7. Getting better.

Last night. Rosalie woke up around 4am screaming yet again. She ate a bottle and thought she was going to be up for the day. I put her in her crib awake. She buzzed around then starting crying. I calmed her and put her back in. She rolled around and went to sleep and slept til 7. Getting better.

It's been a lot of work.. but totally worth it. They say it takes at least 4 nights of this routine for a child to start getting use to it.. but it can take up to 10 straight days of persistence for this to work. Hopefully we get her on an awesome sleeping schedule by the time my mom gets here because we're going to be running so much we're all going to be so exhausted and I hate to think of being up all night with her after being on the move all day.

CIAO! :)