“If you don’t sleep train, you will never sleep again!”, “Are you going to let your baby cry? What kind of a mother are you?”. Sleep training is a heated subject, full of opinions and must-dos. But it shouldn’t be.
As you probably know by now, I have two kids. A beautiful almost 3-year-old girl, and a sweet 1,2 years-old boy. As a stay-at-home mom, they are with me 24/7. You would think that spending that much time with them would make me “learn” the ins and outs of parenting at a much faster pace, right?!
Right, no. Absolutely not. My kids are VERY different from each other.
The firstborn, my daughter, slept through the night at 2 months. It was the most amazing thing and I always felt like the luckiest mom in the whole world. I was rested, energetic, so full of love and joy in the morning.
That lasted 2 months. At 4 months, she started showing signs of teething… and she has never ever slept through the night again TO THIS DAY. Yep, she is almost 3 years old and does NOT sleep through the night.
For the first two years of her life, she would only sleep with me. While being held by me. And being nursed by me. There were NO other ways that anyone could make her sleep.
My son, on the other hand, was easier to figure out. He has always wakened up at least twice since he was born. I don’t remember he ever sleeping more than 4 hours at once… like, ever.
So as you can probably imagine, my nights are awesome. I go to sleep at around midnight after doing all my night chores/routine and spending some time with my husband, then I wake up (or am awaken) a minimum of 4-5 times every night, and we are all up and running by 7.
How my craving for alone time changed everything
Must read: When My Kids Make Me Angry
When I had my daughter, I was soooooooooo overjoyed and had that tingly sensation of a first-time mom. I didn’t want to be apart from her for a second of the day.
I let her nap in my arms for hours, would go to sleep with her at 7 PM and rarely spend time with my husband, ran to nurse her at the first peep she made, and I had all the time and energy in the world.
It’s not that I regret doing that, honestly. But did it make my life more difficult as time went by? Yes, absolutely.
The reason I don’t regret it, though, is because not only she needed that, but also I did. As a new mom, I craved those moments more than anything in my life and it was important to do all of that, emotionally speaking it was the right decision to fulfil a mental desire I had.
With my son, it was very different.
I was just as much overjoyed, just as excited to meet him and just as in love with him when he was born. But I was also more aware of motherhood.
Not only that, I was coming out of a deep depression that nobody but my husband knew I was going through. Between leaving my home to moving someone’s house, to then suddenly getting pregnant, and then moving to someone else’s house, my life was a mess, to say the least.
Why am I telling you all of this?
I’m telling you all of this to try and be very clear to say that every situation is different and that every family is different. It’s honestly the worst idea ever to try and follow someone else’s guidelines to the fullest when it comes down to motherhood and parenting in general.
Not only that, but your own needs will change over time. I was a firm believer in co-sleeping and very vocal against sleep training of any kind. Joke’s on me, right?
I am, personally, still not a fan of the cry-it-out method. I’ve never done it, and maybe if I had, my kids would be sleeping through the night by now. But I never wanted to.
But I did sleep train my son (for the most part) so that I wouldn’t have the two of them in bed with me for the next 3 years of their lives. And, along with that, I also moved my daughter to her own bed.
Although I do not consider them fully sleep trained, since they still wake up at least 2-3 times at night, they no longer sleep with me. That is a HUGE advance in my parenting journey.
Sleep training the 1st and 2nd born: very different approaches.
As I said, I never sleep-trained my daughter until she was close to 2 years old. She was the definition of spoiled when it was down to her sleeping habits and it was all fun and games for a while. Until it wasn’t anymore.
She was only 10 months when I got pregnant with her brother. From then on, sleeping with her kept getting more difficult, little by little.
Not only that, I started realizing that I was missing out on a lot. Missing out on time with my husband, on a relaxing bath before bed, on having a glass of wine while watching a movie.
Then, my son was born and that desire for some “me time” or some alone time with my husband kept on growing.
So, he and I joined forces and decided to sleep train both of them. Or at least try.
We started out with my daughter, since she was older and more “clingy” than he was (if there is even such a thing). It was the most heartbreaking thing I ever had to do as far as parenting goes.
We didn’t want to do the cry-it-out method, and I honestly don’t even believe that would work with her anyways. So we did a combination of the “pick up, put down” and the “chair” methods.
The pick up, put down method
The name says it all: you prep your kid for bed, put them in their crib/bed, give them snuggles and everything else as normal, then you leave the room. If they are used to sleeping with you or with having you around at all, they will fuss. So you come back in, pick them up, give them a hug and a kiss, and put them right back down once they’ve calmed down.
You will probably need to do it dozens of times in one night until they finally “give in”. It is an exhausting journey, that I can assure you.
“The Chair” sleep training method
“This is a very gradual sleep-training method ( McGinn gives her clients a two-week plan for implementation) and requires a lot of discipline on the part of the parents. Again, you prep your baby for bed, but instead of leaving the room, you sit in a chair next to the crib. When they fall asleep, leave the room, but every time they wake up, sit back down in the chair until they fall back asleep. Every few nights, move the chair further and further away until you’re out of the room.” (Today’s Parent)
How we did it
We would start the night with the “pick up, put down”. She hated it, it was horrible, so we only did it a couple of times each night. Then, since she was able to understand us, we would reason with her.
“Ok, mommy/daddy will stay here. We will be sitting right on that chair until you fall asleep”.
It made her feel like she had “won” by us not leaving.
What it really meant was that we, in a way, manipulated her by thinking she had won, when in fact she was actually falling asleep on her own which is what we wanted.
It took about 3 nights, and she could finally fall asleep without being held by me or nursing. For the first time in 2 years.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much a difference that made in my life. As a mom, part of me was heartbroken because I missed her in bed with me like a fish out of water.
I’ve learned that, as moms, we do the whole sleep training along with our kids.
It took me a few weeks to adjust to that. It’s almost like I had to be sleep trained as well. I would wake up in the middle of the night and go watch her sleep, with literally tears rolling down my face and an aching heart.
But I knew that it was the first of many milestones she would break through. And that, as a mom, I’m blessed to even get to witness it all.