sleep, summarized (eventually)

Two friends on two separate occasions recently asked me about my experience with CIO.

In trying describe to them what we’ve been through I realized that the details have blurred in my mind.

In going back through the blog to try to piece it together, I must admit I regret not blogging every single day, every detail of his crying, napping, nursing, etc. It’s still interesting to me every day. I got worried I’d bore my readers. Or more succinctly, I worried that I was being boring.

For the record: It was NOT three nights of crying and then pure sleep perfection as all the nice neat stories in the book led me to believe we would have. (Maybe I’m doing something wrong?)

Today was surprising, for example. He woke up at 3 a.m.-ish. Scott gave him a bottle. He woke up again around 5, and we tried to ignore it because he’d just fed at 3, but I gave in and nursed him and pretty soon it was 6 and as far as he’s concerned, that’s as far as sleeping goes in a morning.

He seemed tired around 8:15 so I put him down in the crib. He talked to himself for half an hour, and then fell asleep for about an hour and a half. He hasn’t had a nap that long in a while, or at least not very often.

After a lovely day out at the Farmers’ Market, and the not as chic as it sounds “Art and Wine” festival on our blocked-off retail strip, and the swings, I put the very tired boy back in his crib sometime after 3, and he talked to himself and occasionally complained until falling asleep at 4 and staying asleep for an hour.

Dinner, playtime, and then the tired-and-whiny’s kicked in. Books, a little rock and sing, and then back into the crib at 6:30. It sounded like he was out immediately, and I was already writing a self-congratulatory blog post in my head when he suddenly rousted himself for a 20 minute scream-fest and then conked at 7.

That’s what today was like.

In summary, CIO looked like this:

When Jonah was just a week shy of 6 months old, we moved him to the crib in his own room. 

In the following weeks, we seemed to enjoy some degree of success with putting him down to sleep, but not with having him stay asleep.

On June 22, his resistance to going to bed hit an all-time high and we opened one of the CIO books and applied the instructions therein.

Three nights later, with us still following the cry/check model, the boy had his first 8 hour stretch. The next night he cried a lot before falling asleep.

The next six nights were varying degrees of great and not, with 5 to 30 minutes of crying before sleep. Soon after that, naps started falling apart.

Five days later, he had a nine hour stretch.

Two days after that, on July 9, he had his first 11-hour night.

Somewhere in the above-described 18 nights of sleep-training, we had one where he woke up and cried four times, but we only went to him twice. And let him cry back to sleep the other two times. We’d decided that midnight and 4 were fine times for night nursing, and that he’d survive the wakings at 10 and 2 without.

For the most part, he has kept up the 10-hour stretches since then.

That’s our messy story. Not one for the books.