When we first decided to nightwean, I struggled. I worried about how Lucy would handle the change. She surprised both Brett and I when she made the adjustment relatively smoothly, with very little fussing at all. The whole process took less than a week, and we maintained our family bed. For more details on the technique we used, check out Dr. Jay Gordon's website.
However, we all knew this was a short-term solution- while I love, love, love bed-sharing, it simply isn't safe with a toddler and a newborn in the same bed. So Brett and I finally took the plunge and began to make the adjustment to having Lucy sleep in her own crib. Right now, the crib's still in our room, but eventually we will move her to the nursery- we don't want to have issues with the new baby waking her up and vice-versa.
Anyway, tonight marks Lucy's fourth night in her crib. The first two nights, it took 45 and 30 minutes to put her to sleep, respectively. Because I don't believe in allowing babies to "cry-it-out," I spent that time sitting on a pillow beside Lucy's crib. Following her nighttime nursing session and follow-up bottle, I would lay her down in her crib with her "lovey" and "paci," and rub her back while singing to her. If she stood up and tried to play, I would simply lay her down again and continue on. Although it took more patience than I previously knew I had, my persistence overcame Lucy's will to stay awake, and she eventually fell asleep with virtually no tears shed and minimum fussing.
On the third night, Lucy put herself to sleep! After laying her down with her paci and lovey as before, she just went right to sleep. The same thing occurred tonight. I am in awe!
Although we still have a ways to go (Lucy still wakes up several times at night, often needing one of us to replace her paci before she can fall back asleep, and she does come in to our bed in the morning, because I nurse her before work), I am so proud of my daughter! She is proving to be a very flexible and resilient little girl.
4 comments:
Yay! :)
yay Lucy! (and parents!) I am also not a fan of Cry it out, and luckily Rowan has never wanted nor needed anything more than a second of attention (well, except on teething nights, and then nothing works but... pain relief). he wakes, I soothe him - normally a paci and a rub to say hello, and he's back to sleep. I still bring him in the bed with us in the morning - I'm still not so happy at not co-sleeping, but it works for him. You can't really fight what's Good For Him, you know?
I'm so happy for you! Hopefully, if she needs to be in her own room, it'll work out well for you all.
That's great, I hope we have an easy time getting Ivey into her own bed when the time comes! Even though we probably will have problems with the baby and Ivey waking each other up, we're probably going to keep Ivey in our room anyway for a while. It's either that or put her in with Suzi and let the two of them wake each other up :-) Ivey bothered Suzi at first when we were all in the same room. When Ivey cried, Suzi said "I don't like that noise!" and asked her dad to take her downstairs to sleep on the couch. LOL.
Go Lucy! Go Momma & Daddy! I am thinking this is something we are going to attempt..just trying to figure out the "how" and "where" since we got rid of our crib... :)
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