Jordyn's "Ferberization", Night 1

As usual, I'm waaaaay behind on both reading and writing blogs, but for now, that will have to wait.

For the past three weeks, Jordyn's sleep has been downright horrific. I know I posted a couple of times, but it's continued beyond that, and I'm DONE. She either wakes up multiple times a night, and each time I have to hold and rock her back to sleep, or she wakes up only once or twice, but is awake for HOURS on end (literally 1-4 hours straight) in the middle of the night. And naps? The other day it took me a solid hour of holding and rocking her (standing up; the glider doesn't cut it) to get her to fall asleep for a nap. And she slept for a measly 40 minutes. She's way too heavy at this point (somewhere around 25 pounds) to be holding her like that for an hour - or hours - at a time!

I don't know WTF is going on, but I'm beyond over it!

When she finally fell asleep for that nap, I promptly went downstairs and made her an appointment at Boston Children's Hospital sleep clinic. Which just happens to have been founded by and run by Dr. Ferber himself. That appointment isn't until early September, but I knew I couldn't wait that long to at least *try* to improve her sleep.

I was going to try the "Sleep Lady Shuffle", but then when talking with my friend Ali, who has an 8 or so month old, she said she did Ferber, and it worked well and didn't seem so bad. So I borrowed Ferber's book from her, read part of it, and decided to give it a try. It did kind of sound like it might work better for Jordyn, and work faster, too.

The problem I was having was figuring out how and when to do it. Since I work until midnight 2-3 days a week, and Jordyn and I currently sleep at my parents' house on all those nights (the babysitter (or lack thereof) situation is a whole other story, which definitely needs its own post), and one or other of my parents put her to bed on those nights, and I *know* they wouldn't follow even a very specific, detailed, typed-out plan closely enough (and to be honest, it's probably not even fair to expect them to), I wasn't sure how to go about making it happen, short of taking time off from work. Seriously. Using my hard-earned *vacation* time to sleep-train my baby. No fucking way. Not to mention the fact that I have to request time off a 4-6 weeks in advance, which makes it not really work anyway.

So I looked at my schedule, and realized that starting tonight, I have five nights in a row where I can be home and put Jordyn to bed... and Ferberize her. I decided it was now or never.

I was dreading it. Absolutely, positively, 100% DREADING it. All day today, I kept hugging her, telling her how much I love her and to never forget that, and telling her that tonight she was going to go to sleep with Minnie Mouse (who seems to possibly be on her way to becoming Jordyn's "lovey") in her crib, without Mommy there. And I kept telling myself that "I can do this" - literally out loud, and over and over again, and then telling Jordyn that "you can do this". And I procrastinated bedtime a little bit, but I also wanted to make sure she was good and tired.

I changed up her bedtime routine a little bit, too. I decided to make all the changes in one fell swoop, and not keep changing things up on her one at a time. I needed to switch her bottle to earlier in the routine, and add toothbrushing in after it. I also flipped her mattress over today - it has a firm side and an extra-firm side, and I decided that it was time to give her a more comfortable sleeping surface since she's now 1 and sleeping on her belly anyway.

So... it took her 2 hours and 10 minutes to fall asleep. I changed up Ferber's timing for checks a little bit - I planned to do 1 minute, then 2, 3, 5, 7, and then 10 for as many times as it took. But you know what? A few of the intervals ended up being longer than they were supposed to be, because she was starting to settle a little, or completely quiet (although still awake), and I didn't want to mess with a "good" thing. The 7 minute interval was 8 minutes 45 seconds, the first 10 minute one turned into 16 minutes 24 seconds, and the second 10 minute interval? How about 1 HOUR, 6 minutes, and 20 seconds!!

For a while, she alternated between standing up and crying/screaming, and sitting down completely quiet, and then the crying/screaming turned to just mild to moderate crying alternated with periods of quiet. And there was one really long period where she was sitting down in the crib, totally quiet, and I think repeatedly starting to nod off while sitting up, but not falling asleep because she was sitting up! She'd also occasionally look up at the door. I kept telling her (not to her, but to her on the monitor screen) to just lie down, and that she'd be asleep in seconds. After about an hour, she started to cry again, and she stood back up, and she escalated to the point where I went in for a check. But that was the last one. She screamed initially when I left the room (as she did with each check - she screamed bloody murder when I walked out, but not always for too long), but then got quiet again and sat down. At about 16 minutes and 40 seconds in, I realized I could neither hear nor see her. I was pretty sure she was asleep, but she was too close to the end of the crib for me to be able to see her on the monitor. Ten minutes later, I deemed her "asleep" as I still hadn't heard or seen her.

I was dying to open her door and check on her, just to see what position she was in. If she was sitting up and slumped over, I may have tried to lie her down. I was really afraid of waking her up, so I wasn't going to do it. I really wasn't. I got ready for bed, but then I couldn't help myself. I slowly turned the doorknob, opened her door, and saw her lying down on her belly across her crib, towards the end, just out of the monitor's view. Asleep.

Now. I should most definitely be sleeping, but I wanted to get this written. I have no idea if she'll sleep through the night. She hasn't done that in almost three weeks. I *really* don't want to have to start this process over at 2am!

To be continued...

Edited to Add: That was shortlived. She woke up at 1:50am, and we're starting over...

Edited to Add: It took 1 hour and 35 minutes for her to fall asleep the second time. Then she slept from 3:25 to 8:30, which might sound like a pretty long stretch, but she (and I) did not get *nearly* enough sleep total last night!