CIO

I read babywise when the kids were 4 weeks old and implemented the eat/wake/sleep time schedule, however the babies were not in their cribs at that time. I could not bring myself to let them cry it out and didn't feel the need for scheduled "naps" yet. I am now paying for my late start! Although the eating schedule and wake/sleep time are working great, the babies have never slept through the night, which Babywise promises to happen by 9 weeks. That is if you follow the whole program. I do not have bad sleepers by any means, but the babies always woke up at about 2am and I hold them off until 3am for a feeding, and again at 6. The problem was not the feeding itself, but that one of the two always woke up an hour before feeding time, so I would lose 2 hours sleep on top of feeding time. The day I got home from Oakdale I decided it was the perfect time to transition the babies into their own room and own cribs since they hadn't been in our room or their normal Pack N Play for a week anyway. I reread Babywise and at least 50 posts on a Babywise blog the day I returned home and was ready to get to work.

I put the kids down in their own cribs for every nap Monday and they screamed for every nap. not just cried themselves to sleep, but screamed through almost the entire hour-hour and a half nap. Poor little things were exhausted that night and crashed. I could hardly get them to even suck to eat their dreamfeed at 10pm. Tuesday was the polar opposite of Monday. They had shots that morning which must have wiped them out because they went down without tears for every nap that day. The rest of the week got significantly better. It has been one week since the Cry it out process started and I think the babies have the new routine down. I am like a hawk watching them for "nap ques." If I catch them at the right time they go down with little to no tears. There are sporadic naps where they still scream (especially if they wake up 30-45 minutes into the nap), but they are learning to stop and put themselves back to sleep. Right now my struggle is that Laney seems to take significantly shorter naps than her brother. It seems to be working to put her in the swing when she wakes up until it's time to eat. The naps really are making the waketimes so much more fun and the babies are generally happier and in better moods!

Although the naps are great, the real reason for all of this is nighttime sleep. The book says that babies should drop the middle of the night feeding on their own. Before I started this last week there was no sign of this ever happening. Now I am hopeful. The past 3 nights the babies have slept until 430am without so much as a peep before. I feed them within 15 minutes and they go right back down until 730. I will give them another week or so to try to move the 430 feeding to at least 6, which I would consider a full nights sleep. If they don't stretch it the extra hour or so on their own I will have to let them CIO for a few weeks since waking up is more out of habit at this point than because they are hungry. Listening to them cry breaks my heart and is so much harder than anyone prepares you for, but the progress in their moods, their schedule, and their sleep in just one week has been amazing! Thank you Babywise.