Almost a year ago I shared some insights into our process of getting Annie to sleep through the night in her own room. I stand by our sleep training process; it worked well and continues to work well. So, I wanted to share a brief update. Click here to read the original post.
Time Change Debacle
Last weekend Daylight Savings Time ended, and we changed our clocks to spring forward. The first morning, Annie slept until 9 thanks to an extra tired kiddo and the bonus hour provided by the clocks. Sounds awesome, right? It was, but it was the calm before the storm. That was the last good sleep for the week.
Every other night this week she’s woken up in the middle of the night, wide awake and stayed awake despite our best efforts for two hours. We tried diaper changes, rocking, bouncing, Tylenol for teething, milk, changing the song on the Going Through the Motions
As I looked back at my first post on the subject, I laughed out loud when I read “we only want to sleep train once.” It’s funny because we actually end up going through these motions pretty often. Call it a sleep training refresher course if you will every time she has a sleep regression, every new milestone like standing, every time change, and every time we travel. I guess you can say that I’m not super patient with waiting for a phase to pass. Luckily our system works well for Annie and is pretty simple. Here’s a refresher on what we do: Tonight, while waiting to see if she would start crying for our 5-minute period (she didn’t – woohoo!), I opened Facebook and interestingly one of the other local moms was asking when to start sleep training her 7-month-old. The other moms graciously chimed in with their experiences, but one mom stood out to me. She said they are “in the midst of re-sleep training their 20-month-old.” Before that I hadn’t considered how much work we’ve put into helping Annie to get good sleep. I’m by no means a sleep expert, but I was certainly naïve to think Annie would only need help developing her sleeping skills once. Babies and toddlers are changing and growing so much that they may need help along the way figuring out how to relax while they adjust to their changing lives and environment. So, I just want to take a moment to remind all of you sleep deprived moms and dads out there that it’s okay to sleep train more than once. They will get the hang of it and be sleeping on their own in no time. In the meantime, enjoy the extra snuggles. You’re doing a good job! She slept through the night. All night! We started our routine about 7:15, she was asleep by about 8 and we didn’t hear from her again until 7:15 this morning. I feel good!Sleep Training Refresher
3/20 Update
