I want to thank all of you who provided comments on my previous post about my son’s inability to sleep through the night. My husband and I decided that we were definitely responding to his whimpers a bit too quickly.
I still rock and nurse him to sleep, but I make sure he’s ever so slightly awake when I put him in his crib at night. The first night it took him less than 10 minutes to fall asleep. He moaned a bit but no tears were shed. I couldn’t believe he fell asleep so easily and I now think that trying to rub his back and ‘shh’ him to sleep were actually making it more difficult rather than easier for him.
We also changed our habits once he falls asleep. Rather than running up the steps at the very first sound he makes we let him move around and even moan if necessary.
As crazy as it now seems he never even cries. Instead he loudly whimpers, moves from side to side, flips from back to belly and back again, finds a comfy position and puts himself right back to sleep.
I don’t want to jinx myself, but now he’s falling asleep on his own and staying asleep for eight to nine hours a night. He still has a knack for waking at 5 o’clock in the morning, but he tends to breastfeed and then go right back to sleep. Then he’ll typically sleep for another two hours.
Thank you all for the advice! I think it’s so funny that I was afraid to let him ‘cry it out’ and he never even cried!