Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Sleep Training

My little Mr. Harrison is such a good baby in almost every way. The one area he qualifies as a "hard" baby would be his sleeping habits. He falls asleep pretty well but staying asleep is another story. I think he has only slept through the night about 5 times since he was born. Typically he is up about 3 times a night (11, 2, and 4 or 5).

Two nights ago he was up about 5 times between 11 pm and 4 am. I knew Jon was leaving town in the morning and I would be single moming it. So when he woke up again at 4 am after being tended to like 5 times in the last 5 hours I decided it was time to let him learn to self soothe. I just didn't think I could do all I needed to if I got up again with him.

So I turned on every fan in the house and went back to bed. When Jon got up at 5 to leave town, he told me Harrison was not asleep. (He was probably still crying.) As much as this kills me, because my mother heart hurts thinking of him crying all that time, I knew it was essential for me to function.

When I got the girls up at 6:30 he was asleep. He slept till about 7:30 and woke up happy. Last night I put him down around 7:30 and he slept till somewhere in the 3 am hour. I held myself back from going to nurse him because I wanted to build on the self soothing lesson from the previous night. So again I turned on the fans and went back to bed. The girls and I got up at 7 and he was still asleep. He woke up around 7:30 with a big smile on his face.

Sleep is so essential for we humans. It makes us in such a better mood. I am crossing my fingers that tonight will go well and perhaps by this weekend our little Harrison will have learned that when he wakes up in the night it is time to just roll over and go back to sleep. This is not one of those fun lessons to teach but it is so completely wonderful once it is learned.