Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Sleep Training (long term sanity outweighs short term insanity)
From birth till about 8 weeks, Kayla slept like all infants do. Her life was fractionated into 3 hour blocks consisting of eating, sleeping, soiling her diapers and just laying there looking cute.
Sometime around her Baby Naming/Aruba trip things changed. Miraculously, she began to sleep from about 7pm to 5am straight. She would get up to eat at about 5am and then sleep again from about 5:30am to 7:30am. At bedtime we generally bathed her, fed her and read her a book. We would put her in her crib, turn on her ocean wonders, turn out the lights and walk away. There was no crying and it was amazing. We felt truly blessed.
That all changed about a month ago when Kayla got sick. Because she was not feeling well, she refused to sleep unless she was in someone's arms. At first we tolerated this behavior because of her illness, but then it began to spiral out of control. She suddenly "forgot" how to soothe herself and began to demand rocking as a prelude to sleep. At first this only occurred at bedtime but then started to become part of her napping ritual as well.
Kayla always fought sleep and was a poor napper but at least she did sleep and did nap. Finally, her sleep issues came to a head in St. Barth's where she became chronically overtired and cranky, refused to sleep without rocking or walking and began to consistently wake in the middle of the night. I have to admit that we definitely forced the issue by bringing her out with us every night for dinner thereby pushing her bedtime later than normal. Additionally, we did not strictly respect her nap time and forced her to take cat naps at times.
Having realized the error of our ways, my WW and I decided to consult the sleep gods. Enter "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Richard Ferber and "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth. Both books are excellent. I would say that the Weissbluth book does a better job at explaining sleep physiology. Interestingly enough, both books say almost exactly the same thing. For your child to develop properly, to be happy and to preserve parental sanity, they must learn how to sleep properly. As a parent, you have to provide the framework for adequate sleep during the day and at night and you have to help your children learn to self sooth. Both doctors promote some form of extinction therapy as the method to "train" your baby to sleep. Weissbluth doesn't like Ferber's gradual method because he feels that sometimes the child's resolve to cry outlasts the parent's resolve to listen to it. We would tend to agree. Following consultation with our amazing Pediatrician we decided to try a modified version of Weissbluth's method. We also decided to attack night time sleep first and then move to naps.
While Kayla's sleep training is now a work in progress, we have seen instantaneous positive results. Both nights, she was asleep by 7pm in under 30min, only screamed for 10min, remembered how to turn on her ocean wonders aquarium by herself, soothed herself after waking a few hours later, woke to eat at 5:15am, cried a bit but was back asleep by 6am and was out of bed by 7:30am.
After this experience, we realize that we have to be a little more cognizant of Kayla's schedule and try to incorporate it into a, somewhat, normal adult life for us. We cannot drag her around everywhere and expect her to instantaneously adapt. Sometimes tough love in the short term will have long term positive results. I can only hope that we are the only ones who carry long term memories of this experience.
Right now I'm just happy to have my smiling Beanie back and that my wife and I have one less stressor to obsess about.
Sometime around her Baby Naming/Aruba trip things changed. Miraculously, she began to sleep from about 7pm to 5am straight. She would get up to eat at about 5am and then sleep again from about 5:30am to 7:30am. At bedtime we generally bathed her, fed her and read her a book. We would put her in her crib, turn on her ocean wonders, turn out the lights and walk away. There was no crying and it was amazing. We felt truly blessed.
That all changed about a month ago when Kayla got sick. Because she was not feeling well, she refused to sleep unless she was in someone's arms. At first we tolerated this behavior because of her illness, but then it began to spiral out of control. She suddenly "forgot" how to soothe herself and began to demand rocking as a prelude to sleep. At first this only occurred at bedtime but then started to become part of her napping ritual as well.
Kayla always fought sleep and was a poor napper but at least she did sleep and did nap. Finally, her sleep issues came to a head in St. Barth's where she became chronically overtired and cranky, refused to sleep without rocking or walking and began to consistently wake in the middle of the night. I have to admit that we definitely forced the issue by bringing her out with us every night for dinner thereby pushing her bedtime later than normal. Additionally, we did not strictly respect her nap time and forced her to take cat naps at times.
Having realized the error of our ways, my WW and I decided to consult the sleep gods. Enter "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Richard Ferber and "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth. Both books are excellent. I would say that the Weissbluth book does a better job at explaining sleep physiology. Interestingly enough, both books say almost exactly the same thing. For your child to develop properly, to be happy and to preserve parental sanity, they must learn how to sleep properly. As a parent, you have to provide the framework for adequate sleep during the day and at night and you have to help your children learn to self sooth. Both doctors promote some form of extinction therapy as the method to "train" your baby to sleep. Weissbluth doesn't like Ferber's gradual method because he feels that sometimes the child's resolve to cry outlasts the parent's resolve to listen to it. We would tend to agree. Following consultation with our amazing Pediatrician we decided to try a modified version of Weissbluth's method. We also decided to attack night time sleep first and then move to naps.
While Kayla's sleep training is now a work in progress, we have seen instantaneous positive results. Both nights, she was asleep by 7pm in under 30min, only screamed for 10min, remembered how to turn on her ocean wonders aquarium by herself, soothed herself after waking a few hours later, woke to eat at 5:15am, cried a bit but was back asleep by 6am and was out of bed by 7:30am.
After this experience, we realize that we have to be a little more cognizant of Kayla's schedule and try to incorporate it into a, somewhat, normal adult life for us. We cannot drag her around everywhere and expect her to instantaneously adapt. Sometimes tough love in the short term will have long term positive results. I can only hope that we are the only ones who carry long term memories of this experience.
Right now I'm just happy to have my smiling Beanie back and that my wife and I have one less stressor to obsess about.
