If you've noticed that I haven't written a blog post in a while, let me remind you that I have two children now. Two children who are beautiful, wonderful, and an absolute handful!
I recognize that what I'm about to write may not be very interesting in the slightest to anyone who may stumble across it. This is more of a "write it down for my own memory" post. That being said, we are currently working on sleep-training the soon-to-be one-year-old in the Stone home.
We have a two-bedroom home. There are four of us. This causes a slight conundrum in the sleeping arrangement department. Now, before you give me the "when I was growing up" speech, I'm fully aware that much greater numbers of people have lived in far smaller spaces. My own father is one of eight siblings, and they always had multiple children per room in their house. (On that note, I honestly never thought about how that worked with new babies, until I had my own children.) Back to our current circumstance. The complication is this: Owen has yet to sleep completely through the night. He has made drastic improvements (he wakes up once a night at the same time every night now), but still not straight through the night. He either must share a room with us, or share a room with Aubrey (who has just turned three). If he shares a room with us, we have to tip-toe around in the dark when we need to do anything after he has gone to bed. If he shares a room with Aubrey, we run the risk every night of him waking her when he has his middle of the night wake-up. And then we would have two children awake in the middle of the night that we would have to deal with. In either sleeping arrangement, I am also limited in the sleep-training department. By that, I mean that if he were in a room alone, there are steps I would take or techniques I would implement to help teach him how to self-soothe when he wakes up in the night, which would eventually teach him not to wake up at all. The primary "technique," if you can even call it that, is that I would let him cry it out (within reason). I am confident that this would work pretty well for him because this is how we got him to break the habit of waking up TWICE a night, as the first wake-up time was before we had gone to bed. He can't cry it out in Aubrey's room, for obvious reasons. He can't cry it out in our room because not only do I have very limited patience for a crying baby who is only three feet away from me, he also KNOWS that I'm three feet away from him and is totally offended by me not responding to his crying, which makes him cry even more.
Enter: my hair-brained idea that may actually work. Rob and I are spending several nights (hopefully not more than "several") sleeping on an air mattress in the living room! While it is not the world's most comfortable arrangement, I can already say that it is helping to accomplish the sleep-training that so desperately needed to take place. Last night was our first night, as the air mattress was already inflated from the "pajama party" we hosted for the kids' birthdays. Owen had his usual wake-up, but I did not respond. His crying escalated in a matter of minutes to the "I'm REALLY ticked off" screeching cry, but just as soon as it escalated, it dwindled down to nothing. He put himself back to sleep! I was so proud of him! Typically, when he wakes up, he will not go back to sleep until I nurse him. I've tried comforting him in other ways, and he is completely calm, until I lay him back down in his bed. And the attempts I have made to soothe him without picking him up (pat his back, speak softly, etc.) just make him more mad that I'm NOT picking him up. So the fact that he was able to get his frustrations out by crying but then put himself back to sleep was a BIG accomplishment!
Tonight will be our second night. I plan for us to continue until either his wake-ups are very brief and I think that he could self-soothe even with us in the room, or until he isn't waking up at all for several nights in a row. I would take either option.
After the sleeping-through-the-night goal has been accomplished, next on the list is Project "Ditch the Pacifier." He only uses it when sleeping, but it is definitely his comfort item. Aubrey was the same way, and we took hers, cold-turkey, on her first birthday, so if we follow suit with Owen, he's got about two weeks left. Aubrey was sleeping through the night much sooner, though, so I'm not sure if that will delay the pacifier process at all. I'm only willing to tackle one of these issues at a time!
When he is sleeping through the night and can fall asleep without a pacifier, the next step in the process will be for him to officially move into Aubrey's room (yay!) He has slept in there quite a few times before, but I have always rushed in to get him and take him out when he has awoken in the night. Life will be much easier when I don't have to worry about doing that.
