We have been having the greatest week of sleep. M has made some great advances rather suddenly. We don't know if it made a difference that we've made a few changes in his bedtime routine or that he was just ready for a developmental leap, but he's been nodding off easily and sleeping for longer periods of time.
As I've written about before, getting to sleep has been Mateo's single biggest challenge. We spent the first five months of his life (well, after the month or two when he just slept all the time on his own) walking him around the neighborhood for every nap and at night, throughout the wet and cold northwest winter.
When he got to five months old, having tried everything else, we started doing a modified version of the Ferber method with him, which for us has meant that we did a soothing routine, put him down awake and went in after five and then 10 minutes to soothe him until he fell asleep. He had gotten to the point where he would conk out in somewhere between five and 15 minutes and we were pretty happy with that for awhile. However, the fact that he still has difficulty getting to sleep even with a very consistent routine started to bother us...so last week we decided to go out and actually buy the Ferber book so that we could see what we might be missing.
As it turns out, Ferber advocates not just going in after five and then 10 minutes, but doing a progressive waiting approach where the waiting times get longer each night. By lengthening out the times between check-ins, you don't end up training your child to fuss until you come back at exactly the same times every night and they learn to fall asleep on their own. Ferber also suggests finishing up your routine with a book or some other quiet time in the child's room, so that they start to associate their room with being sleepy. Our routine usually ended with us going outside to say goodnight to various things and then singing a song while we walked back in and put him in his crib.
After we read that, we changed things around so that we say goodnight outside, sing our song, and then come inside and sit in a comfy chair in his room while we read Goodnight Moon and listen to some lullabies. The first night of the new routine, we couldn't believe the change that happened. We did the routine and left the room and Mateo basically just turned over and fell right asleep. And slept for three hours right away, when he had been waking about an hour after going to bed to eat again. We thought it was just a fluke until he did it again at his first nap the next day, and then at his next nap, and then at bedtime, and so on. He's been doing it since Tuesday and we are still pinching ourselves! We don't know if the change in routine has been just what he needed or if he was just ready to learn how to do this, but we'll take it whatever the reason!
Of course, it seems too good to be true and the reason I'm finally writing this is because I'm worried that it might be. He just had a nap where he seemed on the verge of going to sleep and then woke up wailing and had a very difficult time finally going down. He did finally go to sleep and have a good nap, but I'm feeling really bummed about it. I really thought we were out of the woods on the sleep thing. I guess we're still working on it. And we should be encouraged that the general trend is improving.
This parenting stuff is really challenging sometimes. It seems like you just keep have to keep trying and experimenting and listening to your child until you finally figure out something that works for you...until things change again! We read an article early on called "The Good-Enough Parent" and I guess that's what we're trying to be!
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