Who Are You and What Have You Done with My Daughter?

Please rest assured that as I write this, I am knocking on several objects made of wood – I think we have finally passed the four month sleep regression.

A. is a very punctual baby. She was born on her due date and has been right on target with most milestones. And the very day she turned five months, I really started to see changes in her sleep habits.

The past few nights A. has only woken up to eat twice and a few times has fussed but GONE BACK TO SLEEP. She’s also been going to sleep at bedtime pretty well, with either no crying at all or a few minutes of crying after I put her down just to complain.

I Guess Sleep Training is Not Not Working?

We’ve been committed to sleep training for about a week and a half and have definitely seen some improvement, but it’s definitely not been a miracle. A lot of people promise it will be better by the third night. Those people probably have normal children, not demon children who would prop their eyelids open with toothpicks to stay awake just one more hour if they had the hand-eye coordination to do so.

After a week and a half of sleep training, we’ve continued to have okay, not great nights. We’ve put her in her crib awake every night. Some nights she goes to bed without even a fuss. Some nights she fusses or cries for 15-20 minutes. She feeds 2-3 times a night, which is not terrible, but I can still count the number of times I’ve had four continuous hours of sleep since she was born on two hands. Sometimes she wakes up an hour or two after bedtime and we have to let her cry a bit before she goes back to sleep.

The Exciting Life I Now Lead

Since my daughter A. was born, I’ve pretty much only left the house alone a few times to run to the grocery store or to go to the dentist. Even those occasions were pretty exciting – I could park ANYWHERE without worrying about how far I had to schlep the car seat, trying to heft the thing onto a grocery cart, and then dashing through the store in time to get home for a nap.

So I was pretty excited on Friday night when our in-laws graciously volunteered to come over so we could put the baby to bed and then go out to a hockey game. My husband and I are both big fans of UVM’s hockey team, currently ranked #10 in the country.

So after inhaling my dinner, and encouraging A. to inhale hers, I tossed her in the crib and bolted out the door as fast as possible, yelling FREEDOM on my way out (not joking, ask my husband).

I’ll Take My MacArthur Genius Grant Now, Thanks

After a few days of sleep training, we seem to have passed the 4 month sleep regression and nighttime sleep has improved immensely (I am seriously knocking on wood right now). Most nights she goes down in 5-10 minutes with a little fussing, talking to herself, and hand sucking and only wakes up 1 or 2 times.

Naps are another story. Aside from a mysterious 3 hour nap on Thanksgiving, most naps max out at 45 minutes and are often even shorter. As a result, I was often spending much, much longer putting her down to nap than she actually slept. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Look Who Bought Herself a 1 Way Ticket to Cry-It-Outsville

After several nights of “A.” waking up every 2 hours at night, we’ve officially hit the 4 month sleep regression.

I took her to the doctor, who ruled out teething, an ear infection, or any other obvious cause of her frequent nightwaking. The doctor confirmed what I feared – she had grown so dependent on nursing to sleep that she couldn’t get back to sleep on her own.

I’d been working really hard over the past two months to get her to go down sleepy but awake. It seemed like we had made some progress, but when she failed to fall asleep after a few minutes of crying I usually went in and nursed her again until she fell asleep. That was only reinforcing the problem.