The No Cry Sleep Solution

A while back I posted about Lilly's sleep habits. She went from sleeping all night in her rocker to waking up multiple times throughout the night while trying to transition her into the crib. We have been co-sleeping for about 2 months. Even though her crib is 2 feet from our bed we couldn't find the energy to keep getting up. We also lacked a consistent night time routine. Lilly would fall asleep anywhere between 7:30-9:30. This is when the research began!

We absolutely did not want to try the CIO (cry it out) method. One reason is because I have walked into daycare on occasion to find Lilly crying in her crib because she's "sleepy". If she's doing this at daycare I definitely don't want her to do it at night. That's too much crying for that sweet little face. Also, our job as parents is to comfort and soothe- even at 2 am. When I'm upset about something Mike hugs me and comforts me. He makes sure I'm ok. He doesn't leave me to cry by myself. So why would we expect Lilly to be left alone to soothe herself? I've read where so many parents have tried CIO and it worked after a few days but then a week later they were right back at square one. Nope, not doing it!

Don't get me wrong.. When you are sleep deprived you are desperate to try anything. I definitely thought about trying CIO. People do have success with it. I attempted this one night for about 15 minutes and it was absolutely awful. All of these opinions were formed AFTER I started reading all about sleep training. Then it just made sense to us not to go that route.

And then I found the book, The No Cry Sleep Solution. I feel like she wrote the book just for me. It took me some time to finish it. I only had time to read while I pumped at work. Some things we have tried already and have found immediate success. Other things we haven't even attempted yet. If I was a stay at home mom it would be super easy to apply all of the suggestions because I wouldn't have to get out of my pj's the next day. But I have to get up at 5:30 and go teach 18 second graders...

Sooooo, here is what I've learned so far and what has worked so far!

Starting at about 5:30 we begin the nighttime routine. Lilly eats some dinner, gets a bath if she needs one, puts her pj's on, reads some books and plays in a quite area without a lot of bright lights, and then nurses and falls asleep. We didn't really have this routine in place before. We would play and jack her up and then struggle to put her to sleep. She now falls asleep without much work.

Now, getting her to stay asleep is what we are still working on. Lilly has associated nursing with helping her sleep. So when she wakes up in the middle of the night she wonders where the boob is and immediately starts looking for it. So I spend a lot of time nursing at night because it's a quick fix. She goes right back to sleep and I don't even have to get out of bed. I'm sure it would be a lot easier if lilly took a paci. This is what I need to work on. The book offers many suggestions for this very situation.

So now I just need to decide if I want to keep things the same or really dive into this 100%. I'm just trying to enjoy this time regardless because it's happening so fast. The most important thing is that I'm meeting all of Lilly's needs.