on sleep training.
"Watch carefully, the magic that occurs, when you give a person, just enough comfort, to be themselves." Atticus Sleep training. The dreaded time had come over this past week. Honestly, I think that Matt and I kept putting it off because we had PTSD from sleep training Oliver but when Huck started to move backwards with his sleeping (getting up more than once, being a royal pain to put back down) we knew the time had come. So we braced ourselves and we told Oliver that Huck was going to cry and that he was fine and that it was not his responsibility to go in and help. We are "cry it out" folks and we do the "extinction" method, meaning you do your bedtime routine, put them down drowsy and then walk away and do not go back in to do checks like in the Ferber method. I will be the first to tell you that this sucks. A lot. Walking out of Huck's room as he gears up to scream pulls at my Mama heart strings in the worst way but I know he is safe, full and tired so I close the door and take a deep breath. And in our case it works. And Huck is taking to it much, much better that his brother. The first couple of nights Huck cried for about 20 minutes and then settled in and in most cases has been sleeping through the night but if he has been getting up, it has been to eat and then go back to sleep pretty easily. Now for bedtime, he is down to crying for only about 2-5 minutes and last night because of the time change he slept until 7am! We follow the same routine for naps and he is still crying for about 20 minutes before settling in for naps but again he is actually settling and napping. So I may not have been blessed with the "magical" babies who sleep through the night at 8 weeks old but man does it feel good to get into bed and sleep for a long block of time. It really is the golden ticket of parenthood. Sleep.
"Watch carefully, the magic that occurs, when you give a person, just enough comfort, to be themselves." Atticus Sleep training. The dreaded time had come over this past week. Honestly, I think that Matt and I kept putting it off because we had PTSD from sleep training Oliver but when Huck started to move backwards with his sleeping (getting up more than once, being a royal pain to put back down) we knew the time had come. So we braced ourselves and we told Oliver that Huck was going to cry and that he was fine and that it was not his responsibility to go in and help. We are "cry it out" folks and we do the "extinction" method, meaning you do your bedtime routine, put them down drowsy and then walk away and do not go back in to do checks like in the Ferber method. I will be the first to tell you that this sucks. A lot. Walking out of Huck's room as he gears up to scream pulls at my Mama heart strings in the worst way but I know he is safe, full and tired so I close the door and take a deep breath. And in our case it works. And Huck is taking to it much, much better that his brother. The first couple of nights Huck cried for about 20 minutes and then settled in and in most cases has been sleeping through the night but if he has been getting up, it has been to eat and then go back to sleep pretty easily. Now for bedtime, he is down to crying for only about 2-5 minutes and last night because of the time change he slept until 7am! We follow the same routine for naps and he is still crying for about 20 minutes before settling in for naps but again he is actually settling and napping. So I may not have been blessed with the "magical" babies who sleep through the night at 8 weeks old but man does it feel good to get into bed and sleep for a long block of time. It really is the golden ticket of parenthood. Sleep. 
