An Improvement

My little munchkin has been such a trooper this past week. Not only has he had his 10 millionth cold of the year, major movement with those teeth (another one broke through this week), his Hepatitis vaccine at his 9 month appointment, but he also had to "Cry It Out" per Dr's orders. We just couldn't handle waking up 5 times a night to move him to our bed or back to his crib, me getting kicked in the head, being scared if we were going to roll on him....all of the normal worries when your child is going through a sleeping problem phase.

Day one, he cried for 45 minutes and fell asleep sitting up (you saw the picture). He woke 2 other times and cried for maybe 5 minutes and was up for the day at 6:30.

Day two, he cried for 25 minutes and fell asleep sitting up again! Brian and I took the video camera in there and filmed him. He woke up 2 other times and cried for about 5 minutes as well. He was up for the day around 6:20.

Day three (he fell asleep sitting up again, so that's 3 nights in a row of him doing that), day four, and day five he didn't cry when I put him down to bed. He fell right asleep and woke once around 3-4 am, and just cried for a few seconds before he was back to sleep. Today he woke a little early though, around 5:30 am.

I think we might have a good little night-time routine down, and he is going to bed drowsy and hardly waking, and if he does wake, its only for a few seconds. I am not a fan of getting up before 7am. I am not sure what to do there. My book says that 6 am is a good wake up time for a baby going to bed between 7-8 pm. Ive noticed that when I put him to bed later, he actually wakes up earlier-so I cant really keep him up late for me to get beauty sleep in the mornings. I am just happy that he is in his crib and I don't even have to get out of bed in the middle of the night.

Hopefully, once he is feeling better and we get this tooth down, he will sleep a bit later. I might make a rule that says I wont get him out of bed before 6:30 am, and just pray that he eventually catches on to it. :) All and all, I am very happy about this cry it out experience. It was only 2 nights, and not very much crying. When we first had him cry it out when he was 4 months old, it only took us 1 night of him crying 15 minutes before he slept 8-7am for about 3 months. I've just been a walking zombie for the past 2 months while he developed bad sleeping habits. Hopefully this routine sticks and we can have a good sleeper on our hands!

PS- the pic above has nothing to do with sleeping : ) I just thought it was too funny! He was trying to feed himself and you can see how successful that was!