The dreaded Sleep Post

If you know anything about me raising babies, you know that it has not come naturally.  OR if you know anything about how my family works, you know we are extremely regimented.

...so when my sister suggested reading Babywise before we had Charlie, I was singing hallelujah, it seemed like a beautiful fit. At the start of Charlie's second month, we implemented the Eat, Activity, Sleep (or EASY) routine, by his third month I was putting him down awake and by his fourth month he was sleeping twelve hours through the night. Charlie wasn't always a great sleeper, but because of Babywise he became one. Ezzo was God. When other mothers would complain about their lack of sleep, I would rarely seem sympathetic. And when they would say how great I had it, I would think of the Ezzo words and all the time and effort I put into protecting his sleep...
"When your baby starts sleeping through the night, people will invariably say, “You’re just lucky,” or “You’ve got an easy baby.” Neither statement is true. Your baby is sleeping through the night because you trained him or her to do so. You can take the credit for your success."

And while I knew all the controversy surrounding Babywise, I still trusted that it worked for our family and was proud of that fact.

Enter Mack. It was a no brainer that we would use the same techniques for him. But he was different. Some might have classified him as a "colicky" baby. But I didn't. He wasn't super fussy all the time, but when he cried, he cried HARD and LOUD and LONG. And while his daytime sleep was similar to that of any newborn, chronically waking up and wanting to be held, his nighttime sleep was a disaster. He woke up every 2-3 hours for the first three months. At three months, I CIO his naps and thought that would be the simple solution to his nighttime problems. Nope. While he would randomly (about once a week) give me a 6-8 hour stretch, up until a few weeks ago, he was waking 2-3 times per night.

At first, I would only feed him once/night. But sometimes that would be 9-10pm. According to Ferber, that is supposed to be baby's best sleep. So what the hell was waking him up? And why couldn't he soothe himself back to sleep, when he could so easily during the day? And the crying wore on me, I felt bad for him, I felt bad for Nick and I felt really sorry for myself. How could this be happening? How could Babywise not be working? Eventually, I just fed him every time he woke up, it was the simplest and fastest solution to the nighttime wake-ups.

A few things that were working against us...

• Every time he woke up at night, he seemed genuinely hungry! So I felt horrible depriving him of food, because...
• ...he was a horrible daytime eater. He rarely took a full feeding during the day. He took a bottle at the speed of slow, sometimes taking 30-40 minutes to eat four ounces.  And he would stop nursing after about 2.4 seconds.

Both of these things combined, seemed to be the biggest problem. He was getting the majority of his calories in the middle of night. I knew this was bad, but I also knew it wasn't going to change until I committed (aka made him) to changing it.

• He spit up a lot during the day, and rarely did at night.
• We have a two bedroom house, so he was sleeping in a pack n play in our closet. So instead of being able to tolerate muffled crying (like in Charlie's case), Mack's cries were upfront and center. 
• After starting solids at 5 months, he started to pooping after his feedings, requiring me to get up with him again to change him.
• And he is clearly going to be an endurance athlete. This kid can cry and cry hard for long periods of time. I googled "when cio doesn't work" and "what is wrong with my baby" more than enough times. 

All of this being said (I know, I was making excuses for him), my doctor finally said it was time for me to read Ferber's book and plan on dropping all of his nighttime feedings! So that is what I we did. I read Ferber (brilliant man). We went to Mack's well baby, where the doctor told me he was perfect and capable. I gave him a few days to recover from his vaccines and we started the process last Friday night. We moved Charlie into our room (on an air mattress), so Mack could adjust to crib sleeping and we wouldn't have to worry about Mack waking him up.

On Friday night, Mack woke up at 11:40, I soothed him after three minutes, five minutes and then every ten minutes until 2:15 when he finally fell asleep.
And that was it.
He's been sleeping 11.5-12 hours every night since. 

I have no idea if we "ferberized." It didn't seem like he had enough experience at the issue to get it...
Or he's just smart.
Or he was just ready to wave his white flag and allow the rest of this family the "gift of nighttime sleep."

So, no, Ezzo didn't work this time. But Ferber did...either way, I'm happy.