Alright, Aaron and I were finally ready to do something about Frances' sleep problems. Recently she has not only been a bad sleeper at night, but she is having a horrible time being put down for naps. So, it affected both Aaron and me (and Henry although he probably didn't mind it because he got to play more Wii). I think I know why things got bad. Developmentally, she has really taken off. She now can clap, wave and say "haaa," sign milk and say "mum, mum, mum," give kisses, pull to stand and even crawl (just happened last night). On top of that, her top teeth are finally breaking through. Can you blame a girl for trying to get some extra cuddles?
I can't blame her, but we can't do it anymore. Last Friday when I was at work, Aaron tried letting her cry out for periods of time (the Ferber method), and cry she did. She got so wound up we couldn't even settle her down when we finally went and got her. By the end of the day Aaron was exhausted and Frances had even more of an aversion to the crib.
So, we moved on. One promising technique is the pick up/put down method, or commonly called the PUPD method. I liked this because we console her right away, yet this would condition her to fall asleep IN THE CRIB. What you do is put her in the crib when she is sleepy and say some phrase that you will repeat over and over. Our phase that I picked out is "Good night Sweetie." Once you put her in the crib you can shush her and pat her, but the goal is to let her put herself to sleep. If she cries then you pick her up, but you put her down as soon as she is calm. I read on some blog that the first night it took 2 hours for some baby to fall asleep, so when I got home on Friday night, I was prepared.
That night I saw her rub her eyes and I whisked her away to the crib to try the technique. As I suspected, as soon as her body hit the crib, she started crying (and the more I did it, she started cring on the way down). I would pick her up and calm her pretty quickly, then put her back again. Cry, calm, cry calm. After about 30 minutes she got pretty frustrated and seemed to be refusing everything (even the comfort) Then I tried to analyze the situation and thought, well, maybe she wasn't really tired in the first place. I brought her into the living room and she calmed down. After about 20 minutes, she started rubbing her eyes again, so I took her back to her room. I found out that if I comforted her a few more seconds before I put her down, she seemed to relax more. In the end it took abut 20 more minutes and she was asleep. It felt like a success.
That night Aaron and Henry slept upstairs (and very well I might add), while Frances and I were learning how things go. The first half of the night she woke up every hour (like she has been). I did the PUPD technique each time and it took maybe 10 minutes each time. The last half she extended her sleeping to two hours at a time. When we woke up, I felt things were going pretty well and she was already starting to get the hang of it. That day, putting her down for naps went ok, but she wouldn't sleep for more than 20-30 minutes. When we tried to do the PUPD technique after she took her short nap, it was a very hard fight. Still, it was working.
Saturday night Aaron and Henry went upstairs again and Frances and I had a horrible night. It started off with her waking up every hour for a couple of hours, but then she started waking up every 20 minutes and did this for about 2 1/2 hours. During this time I tried everything, feeding her, changing her diaper, moving locations and finally I felt she was hurting so I gave her Ibuprofen. That must have worked because she finally went down and slept for 2 hours. After that I think she only slept in 1 hour stints and it was becoming harder to put her to sleep.
During the day I was EXHAUSTED. I felt tired, short tempered and angry. I started questioning whether or not this is the right thing to do. I mean, I guess she could just sleep in our bed and wake up every hour to feed for the rest of her life, right? No, that wouldn't work. Oh, also, that day we could see more of one of her upper teeth poking through the gums. No wonder why she was mad, she was big time teething. Great, what a perfect time to start this (insert sarcasm here).
Still, I didn't give up, and I'm happy to say last night when pretty good. She slept for 2, 2 1/2 hour stints and then 3 hours at the end. There was one time in the middle where she was really mad at me and wouldn't settle. I think she was hungry because I fed her and all was good in the world. It must be weird from going to eating every hour to almost nothing. I am okay with feeding her occasionally. In fact, if we finish this training thing and she still eats in the middle of the night, I would be okay with it.
So, we're making some good improvements and I am now even more convinced that this is the right way for us because Aaron just told me she took an hour and a half nap. That's pretty dang good for her.
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