our sleep training success!

sleep training feels like years ago. it was such a great success for us (PHEW) and i sometimes truly forget what it was like to wake up multiple times in the middle of the night. about a month ago august had two nights where he woke up crying around 3am and i very quickly remembered how much i hated that lifestyle. i need my sleep.

at 10 weeks old august was sleeping 12 hours a night. i still can't believe that. before having the baby, we read the baby sleep solution to prepare us. this book was recommended to us by trusted friends, and we saw it work for them. we read it when i was around 6 months pregnant. then we read it again right before the baby was born. caleb studied this book. he spent more time reviewing and preparing than i did.

this book and bringing up bebe were the only books i read on parenting. for sleep training we relied solely on the sleep solution book. we didn't look into taking cara babies or do the cry it out method, or do demand feeding, or any of the millions of other was parents tackle this super tricky and complicated situation.

how we sleep trained:

contrary to many people's preferences, august slept in his own room in his crib from the first night we were home. so yes, at less than 48 hours old, he was in his crib sleeping at night. this shocked people. i was slightly uneasy going into our room to sleep while he slept. but we live in a 1,000 square foot condo. our bedroom is 15 feet from his crib. we kept our doors open. we had monitors on. and trust me, we heard everything. i also firmly believe we all slept better with august sleeping in his own room. the nurses in the hospital actually commented on how noisy of a sleeper august was.

we also got august on a fairly regimented schedule early on. he fed every 2-3 hours the first few weeks. we then stretched to every three hours when he was a month old. and then eventually to every four hours. i can't express enough how much this kept us sane. caleb and i are both better and happier people and parents when we work around a schedule. demand feeding was just not going to work for us. i know it works so well for some -- which is GREAT! but it didn't for us. and that's okay too!

once august was nursing every four hours, he would go to sleep in his crib at 8pm. at midnight, he'd wake to feed, and then at 4am, and then at 8am. and the entire schedule would continue every four hours throughout the day. eventually, around week 6 or 7, august dropped the midnight feeding and he would eat around 2am.

starting at week 8 of life, the book has you begin the 'baby bootcamp'. this essentially means that for four weeks, from week 8-12, you begin to stretch your baby's night time feedings to attempt to drop both the midnight feeding and the 4am feeding. we were lucky because by the time we were starting 'bootcamp' august was only waking once to feed during the night at 2am. the goal was to stretch that 2am feeding as much as possible. eventually it was 5am (he'd still eat at 8am), and then slowly but surely it crept up to 8am. this whole process of stretching the feeding was hard. it was not easy. it took a lot of work. and a lot of coffee. caleb and i would tag team on who would lay on the couch to go in every 5 minutes to soothe august if he was awake and crying trying to stretch him to go a little longer before eating. most of the time august just ended up falling back asleep.

this may sound harsh and sound like we were 'starving' our child. but i can promise you the baby was okay. if he wasn't going to calm down, i would absolutely feed him. but as we soothed and stretched his night time feedings, he began to sleep longer and longer without needing food.

at christmas we went to austin to visit my parents. caleb, myself, and august were all sleeping in the same room due to limited rooms at my parents house. caleb and i both braced ourselves that this could quite possibly be a disaster for august's sleep and all of the hard work we put into training him so far. this was the first time that august had traveled. we were only dealing with a one hour time change, but we were both still very nervous.

i'll never forget when caleb and i woke up on the first morning in austin to august sucking his thumb happily in his crib still half asleep at SEVEN THIRTY IN THE MORNING. had he really just slept through the night?? in a different location?? we could. not. believe. it.

then, the next night he did the same thing!

we had a good laugh, because now that he was sleeping 12 hours in austin, we weren't sure we wanted to ruin it by returning home! however, when we did leave austin and go home, he kept it up. while the training definitely gave august a strong base for have a structured schedule of sleeping, what really helped him get to 12 hours of sleep was finding his thumb and sucking it in the morning when he woke.

we tried to use pacifiers, but august was not interested. they did help a little bit at first during the middle of the night when we were in the thick of sleep training (around week 8 or 9 of life). he would suck on them and then fall asleep. but that only lasted a couple of weeks until he found his thumb.

eventually at about 3 and a half months old august started getting on a morning and afternoon nap schedule (the book explains how to introduce this as well which was very helpful). this was about a month after he was sleeping 12 hours a night.

all in all, august has been an incredible little sleeper and we are all grateful for it. putting our baby on a strict schedule has allowed us to enjoy more time together. we are able to go out for drinks with friends, when we travel we are not nearly as worried about getting less sleep, and knowing that when you go to sleep you almost always will get to sleep the entire night has been such a blessing and something we are so so so grateful for!

top photo from LinenTexture on etsy.