Enter Sandman...

For the first six months we were concerned with RJ's weight gain. His pediatrician recommended we continue to feed him on demand, never going more than five hours without a feed. Combined with pumping breast milk before bed and first thing in the morning -- for the past six months we were operating on six hours of sleep a night with one or two wake up calls. We haven't slept this poorly since college and that takes a toll.


We didn't really intend to institute co-sleeping so long, but when you are sleep deprived, and have a son who fights sleep with all his might, you will do anything to get that motor boatin' son of a bitch to go back to sleep. After his six month checkup in December though, we were back on the weight chart and had doubled his birth weight. That meant with the weight challenge met, we prioritized sleep, specifically sleeping without the parental units, as the next goal.

This is where some expectations were a little misguided. Like eating, I thought sleep would come naturally -- but on the contrary, there are books, many books about different methods for coaxing a screaming infant into blissful slumber. There is the "cry-it-out" school, the "Ferberizing" approach, and the "Gentle" method. This third approach sounded appealing and our pediatrician recommended reading Good Night, Sleep Tight by Kim West. The library had a copy so it became tops on our holiday reading list.

The basics of it are:

• go to bed earlier, between 7 and 8pm is recommended
  
• establish a regular and consistent night time routine of bath, quiet play, storytime, nursing, etc.
• two or three regular naps during the day is essential to avoid getting overtired
• observe the signals of the sleep window such as rubbing eyes, laying head down, fussiness, red or baggy eyes, and don't wait too long before the second wind kicks in and the window slams shut
  
• avoid sleep crutches like pacifier, picking him up, driving, stroller walks, bouncing, etc.
• provide a lovey, or attachment object, for him to hug (we chose Morgan the flying squirrel for him at first, but he has gotten himself much more attached to carrot and green bean - so he sleeps with one of the two vegetables and Morgan)
  
• parental consistency means not caving in to the screams
• stay in the room and calm and soothe to help baby learn to fall asleep
• establish a regular and consistent wake up time and routine, ideally after 6am, and make it dramatic to symbolize the transition to starting a new day
  

The book is full of examples of couples who in a few days had to deal with 15-20 minutes of crying but then could soothe their baby to sleep. There really wasn't any guidance for what to do when the child is inconsolable and has the stamina to go longer than an hour when his goal (being held by us) was so clearly within his reach if he could only figure out how to squeeze his head through the rails of the crib. "Hey, I've fit through tighter spaces" must have been his rationale for continuing to bang his head against the side of the crib.

We dragged the mattress from our guest bedroom in and prepared for a few all nighters. We ended the stay in the room strategy after a few nights though because it didn't seem effective in calming him down when we were in view. It felt cruel to both him and us.

We revised our method and started trending closer to a Ferberizing approach where we would check on him and remind him to go to sleep but otherwise let him cry in his room. The first night involved almost three hours of crying before he finally gave up. Over the first week it took less and less time for him to recognize that he wasn't going to win the sleep war.

On January 19th, 2008, RJ's seven-month birthday, we popped open the champagne we bought for his birth (finally!) and celebrated three consecutive nights going to bed without a fuss and sleeping straight through until morning. He slept for ten hours allowing us to get a full eight consecutive hours. Yay!

He's still not a perfect little sleeper. There are some nights where he still cries a little before falling asleep and a few mornings where he is up a little early -- but mostly this seems to be during fits of teething and when the Tylenol wears off.