Sleep training

A couple of weeks ago, Steve and I were confronted for the first time with the question, "What kind of parents do we want to be?" Up until now, parenting Ruby has been very easy and straight-forward. As they say, there is no way to spoil a newborn because they only have needs, not wants. Crying = bad, and our job = stop the crying. However, at some point, shielding your child from every hardship and giving her everything that she wants becomes more of a disservice. The hard part is figuring out when we've reached that point.

Back when Ruby was a newborn and our greatest concern was trying to get her to wake up, I never would have imagined that one day our concern would be how to get her to go to sleep. Even after Ruby emerged from her Sleepy Period of never once waking up on her own, she was still a very avid sleeper. She started sleeping through the night in 8-10 hour stretches starting around 3 months, something that inspires envy from other parents. Even though she had a hard time going to sleep at night unless she was nursed to sleep, she slept so well at night and was such a happy baby, that I never really worried about it. Plus, I didn't mind nursing her to sleep. I probably wouldn't have minded if she were permanently glued onto my chest and I could carry her around all day like a mommy kangaroo.

However, when Ruby turned 6 months old, her sleeping habits also changed. It became much more difficult for her to fall asleep, and she slept much more lightly. She would often get to the point of being over-tired but not be able to fall asleep, which would set off The Loud Crying. When this would happen the only sure-fire fix was nursing her, because that was they way she had become accustomed to falling asleep. Related to this, Ruby also became extremely attached to me at night. From the time the sun went down until she went to bed, she stuck to me like a little monkey. No one else could hold her, nor could I leave her sights for fear of inciting The Loud Crying. In fact, each of the nights that my mom babysat for us while we were on vacation, I came back to find Ruby red-faced and bleary-eyed from crying, making me feel so horrible that I planned to stop going out at night for the forseeable future.

Even though this behavior was not ideal, it was something I felt like I could deal with because she was fine at night as long as I was holding her, and once she fell asleep, she would still sleep through the night. However, a few days after we returned from Hawaii, Ruby's sleep habits took a turn for the worse. Even though she was nursed to sleep like always, as soon as I would try to put her down in her crib, she would wake up and cry until I picked her up. I could tell that she was very tired and sleepy, but she wouldn't sleep unless I was holding her. It was taking till around midnight or later before she was really going down in her crib, and even then, she would wake up in the middle of the night, realize that she was no longer being held, and cry. Several nights in a row I fell asleep on top of the covers, holding Ruby, in all of my clothes because I could not put her down for a moment to get myself ready for bed without setting off The Crying. I could tell that the issue had to do with attachment rather than hunger because as soon as I picked her up, she would be fine. Unfortunately, Steve picking her often made it even worse, like she was saying, "No no no, I wanted the one with the boobs!"

A few days after all this started, we went in for Ruby's 6 month checkup. When the pediatrician heard about Ruby's bedtime difficulties, she immediately recommended that we begin sleep training. The issue of SLEEP is one of the most heated and controversial topics in baby care. There are dozens of books you can read on the subject, and they span the philosophical spectrum from Crying It Out (Ferber's method) to Attachment Parenting (espoused by Dr. Sears). The standard Crying It Out method of sleep training involves establishing a bedtime routine, putting the baby down at a set beditme, leaving the room, letting her cry for 10 min., checking in on her for 1 min., then letting her cry for 15 min., etc. until she learns to fall asleep on her own. On the other hand Attachment Parenting sleep books encourage parents to continue to respond to their baby's cries and to bring the baby into bed with them if necessary. If my desire to attach Ruby to my chest is any indication, I clearly identified more with the Attachment Parenting philosophy, and the concept of leaving my baby to cry alone in the dark for 10 min. was horrifying to me.

It surprised me when our pediatrician was so matter-of-fact in her recommendation of the Crying It Out method, and so emphatic that we start right away. Even though I was clearly uneasy about the idea, it seemed like her position was that this was what was best for the baby, and any uneasiness I had was a weakness on my part that I needed to overcome.

I left the appointment anxious and confused, so I immediately delved deeper into sleep training research. I learned that there is a lot of logic to the Crying It Out philosophy, in the sense that the goal is to teach the baby how to fall asleep on her own, a skill that will be valuable for the rest of her life. Due to the nautre of human sleep cycles, we all wake up several times in the middle of the night, but most of the time we're not even aware of it because we know how to fall right back to sleep. However, this ability is learned and not innate, so a little baby who has always relied on nursing to fall asleep will not know how to fall asleep on her own unless she is trained. On the other hand, I don't think I agree with the parenting technique of leaving your child to cry by herself in the dark. I discussed it with other member of my playgroup, and it seemed like many of us were in the same boat. We had all been pressured by our pediatricians to sleep train, but nobody had the stomach to leave their child to cry.

I knew that what we were doing at the time clearly wasn't working, and my main fear was that Ruby's attachment issues at bedtime would only get worse. Although I wouldn't necessarily have minded moving Ruby to our bed on a permanent basis, I was concerned that if we put off sleep training until she was a toddler or older, that the process would be exponentially more difficult. Therefore, we decided to try a modified version of Crying It Out called the "Sleep Lady Shuffle," based on a book by The Sleep Lady. Under this technique, the parents do not leave the room, but the baby is still supposed to be put down in the crib and allowed to fall asleep on her own. Although this resolved my misgivings about leaving a child to cry alone in the dark, in many ways this method was much harder than the stardard Crying It Out because in this case, I had to sit by the crib and watch the baby cry.

We tried this method for two nights. By the end of the second night, I was a wreck. I was crying along with the baby, desperate to pick her up, but afraid that if I did, all the crying she already did would have been a waste. Before bedtime the third night, I told Steve that I wasn't going to follow the method anymore; I was just going to wing it. So I put Ruby down in her crib, and miraculously, she fell asleep without fussing at all.

I wish I could say if it was letting her cry that made it work or if it was the decision to no longer let her cry that made it work, but I really have no idea. I do believe that the one thing that has definitely helped was setting a bedtime routine. Nowadays, every night around 8pm, I nurse Ruby, Steve changes her diaper, then I read her a story, put her down in her crib, turn on her sound machine, and sing to her until she falls asleep. In the past couple of weeks, Ruby has been falling asleep on her own, in her crib, with minimal or no fussing.

Although it is always a little sad when your baby doesn't need you as much anymore, I am mostly relieved that, at least for now, we have conquered Bedtime.