This was Bootcamp week for C.. She’s nearly eight months old and still was not sleeping all night, so since S. had five straight nights off, we decided to bite the bullet. We ignored C.’s pleas for attention for the past week to try to get her to learn that she can sleep through the night without a bottle.
We started Sunday night. As normal, she woke up just before midnight and we let her scream for about 15 minutes. Then we heard M. crying as well. We went in and tucked M. back in, told her C. was just trying to go to sleep and that everything was ok. I put our big, floor fan and placed it outside her door to try to dampen some of the sound. S. told her what I was doing, and when she saw the fan, she hopped up and in her mid-day voice, cried out, “Yeah, dere it is!” Then she laughed when I gave her a kiss goodnight and pointed to the fan. It was only another 90 minutes before C. gave up. S. and I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, for about 80 of those 90 minutes. We all fell asleep at the same time, I guess. C. woke up at 5:00, S. gave her a bottle, then she slept until 8:30. Not bad. Not great, but not bad either.
Monday went a little better. C. went down around 7:30. She was up screaming at 11. I could hear her downstairs over her humidifier, the fan in the hallway, and the TV. That continued for just over an hour. Almost as soon as my head hit the pillow after the BCS game ended, she quieted down. She then made it all the way until 7:15, which is some serious progress.
As the week advanced, things got better. Tuesday and Wednesday, we had probably 30-60 minutes of crying each night, but she also calmed down, played for awhile, then put herself back to sleep. S. generally gave her a bottle around 6:00, but then she would go back to sleep until 8:00 or so. Thursday, she may have made noise a couple times, but pretty much slept from 7:30 PM to 6:30 AM, our best night yet.
M. has struggled a bit, though. I think the fan outside her room freaks her out a little bit. Monday night, she started crying when we went upstairs, and she seemed afraid when I put her in bed, which she never does. Each night, she’s waking up at least twice crying. I think she normally wakes up at least that many times a night, but now when she hears the fan she gets afraid and starts crying rather than just flipping over and going back to sleep. The good thing is as soon as you check on her, she goes back to sleep quickly, but it would still be nice to sleep straight through the night with neither kid waking us up.
Tonight is the big test. S. is back at work, so it’s up to me to prove I can deal with crying if C. reverts a bit. I’m pretty sure I can deal with that, it’s the 6:00 AM waking up I’ll struggle with. It’s been so cloudy/rainy here lately that it’s often still pitch dark around 8:00, so it’s hard enough to get out of bed when M. wakes up then. 6:00 could be a real bear. But, all things considered, it’s been a pretty good week with C. adjusting quickly. She’s even putting herself down for naps. In the past, she would often fall asleep on us and we’d take her upstairs. If we tried putting her down before she was asleep, she would start crying eventually, instead of drifting off. Now, she’ll lay in her crib and chatter at her aquarium for awhile, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, before she falls asleep. She does the same in the morning: instead of waking up crying, she’ll wake up slowly and be happy to play quietly until we come and get her. Fingers crossed I haven’t just jinxed her and we revert to old form this weekend.