Ferberization: Night #1

It begins. After a year of helping Sam fall asleep (by nursing, rocking, singing, and shushing in various combinations) , AC and I decided that we had better teach her to fall asleep without us sooner rather than later. To be fair, Sam’s sleep has been tolerable over the past two months. She usually sleeps 9-10 hours at night, and will do 1-2 naps a day. However, more often than not she wakes up at least once in the night and cannot get herself back to sleep without our help. Some nights are great. Other nights… not so much.

Enter Dr. Ferber. I never thought we would resort to his notorious “Cry It Out” technique, although that was before I actually read his book (Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems). To my astonishment, the book (his theories and the technique) made TOTAL sense. We all have sleep associations– things that we do, conditions, etc. that we learn to associate with falling asleep. When one of those conditions is not met, it’s tough to get to the land of nod. He uses the analogy of a pillow. Most adults fall asleep at night with their heads on a pillow. If you wake up in the middle of the night (and we all experience mini-arousals during particular phases of the sleep cycle) and find that your pillow is gone, you will 1) wonder what happened to it, and 2) have trouble settling back down to sleep because you are wondering what happened to it, and you’re used to falling asleep with a pillow. So our poor little daughter has been waking up and night and wondering what happened to her mother and father and their soothing arms, voice, breast, etc.

So the Ferber technique is to put the baby in the crib and let her fall asleep on her own, which may, of course, involve crying. The parents check on the baby at increasing intervals as necessary, to assure her and themselves that she is okay. As Ferber points out, crying is not the point of the technique, but a side effect.

After weeks of disrupted schedules, a cold, and other obstacles (including some fear), AC and I decided to implement the Ferber plan starting TONIGHT. Here’s what’s happened so far:

We kept Sam up a bit late so that we knew she was tired and should be able to fall asleep. At 9:25, after a bath, 2 books, and goodnight kisses, we put her in the crib, sang her a little song in the dark, and then walked out.

During the song, she stared at us in silence, incredulously, as though there were bananas growing out of our heads. Then when we left, she complained very loudly.

We waited 5 minutes. Went back in and spoke to her soothingly and patted her. We left. She cried even harder. I became very afraid.

We were supposed to wait 10 minutes before going to her this time. We busied ourselves in the kitchen, cleaning up from dinner. 10 minutes passed. Silence.

She fell asleep, on her own. Within 15 minutes of bedtime.

We’ve only had to go in to her once!

We’re cautiously optimistic, but stay tuned throughout the weekend. If Sam keeps us up, I imagine we’ll cope with the crying by blogging…