I have been blessed with 2 healthy, beautiful, charismatic children that make my world a better place. However, they both popped out of the womb needing help with sleeping. Jackson was first. After 30 straight nights of being woken up every 2 hours – I was desperate. So at 6 months – we sleep trained him. After 3 days he was trained (see our results HERE). Since he was six months old, he has slept 11-12 hours a night. We consider ourselves VERY lucky.
As soon as Malia was born, one of the things I prayed for was that she would be a good sleeper. My prayer went unanswered. I knew that we would eventually need to sleep train her, but dreaded the thought of it. I knew in my heart that I would have to be at the point of pure exhaustion to make the decision to sleep train. That day arrived on September 18th. After being up with Malia every 1.5 – 2 hours – I was OVER IT. And I think I actually said that to Shane at 2:30am.
So the next evening we sleep trained her. Since it was my birthday week, and we had a very busy week ahead of us, we did more of a mild approach to sleep training – not nearly has aggressive as we did Jackson’s. However, I am EXCITED to report that after 6 days she is sleeping through the night! Last night she slept from 7pm – 4:30am, ate and went back to sleep until 7:30am this morning. THANK YOU BABY JESUS!!!!!
After doing my research, I know that this is the best decision for Malia. It’s rough hearing her cry, wanting me, begging for me to swoop her up and snuggle her to sleep. Developmentally, she NEEDS to sleep and she needs to learn how to put herself back to sleep at night, not need me to nurse her every 2 hours. This is the best decision for our family – and I think EVERYONE is going to benefit from it.
Go Malia.
2 comments:
You are so lucky. To this day my daughter is still the worst sleeper I know. I wonder if it's because of all the traveling.
Yay for sleep! I will confess there have been a few times I have counted the days until we can sleep train Anna. :)
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