Sleep Training

Happy belated 4th of July to everyone! We hope that everybody had a wonderful weekend. We spent out weekend working on sleeping. While we kept hoping that eventually Emma would learn to sleep through the night on her own, things were getting progressively worse, instead of better. Recently, Emma has gotten a bit too comfortable with the idea that mom will come rescue her and sleep with her as soon as she starts crying. While this works for her, Emma is a very restless sleeper so my sleep isn't so restful. That being said, we decided that the three day weekend was the time to start some sleep training. We had tried all the "no cry" methods previously and those were not working so it was time for "cry it out". I am not sure who the cry it out method is harder on, Emma or Brad and I. The first night Emma went down easily but woke around 2 am. We spent the next hour and 45 minutes alternating trips into her bedroom to give her a little pat and reassure her that she had not been abandoned. It sure did make us feel terrible to leave her crying when all we wanted to do was pick her up. The next night was a little better although it took about 40 minutes to get to sleep initially. Then Emma was up around 4 am and took an hour to go back to sleep. The third night was much improved although she was waking up every hour or two, Emma would only cry for a couple of minutes and then drift back off to sleep. We didn't even have to go into the room that night. Last night was even better. After 30 minutes of crying initially, she basically slept until five a.m. and then had to change positions but no crying and then back to sleep. We are cautiously optimistic that Emma is learning how to sleep on her own. Hopefully these improvements will keep up especially since we are heading up to Missouri this coming weekend.