working on my night cheese

so, here i am again, sleep training!  or trying to.  hence the blog post title.  working on my night cheese.  props (do people say that anymore?) to you if you got the 30 Rock reference.  man i love tina fey.  anyway, i remember trying to sleep train z when he was 6 months old or so, and gave up, and then did it again around 8-9 months because we were co-sleeping but none of us were sleeping well.  i tried the graduated extinction method (kind of) and at first it started working but then stopped and so i modified our sleep training so that i just sat next to his crib til he fell asleep, the plan being that i would move myself further away from the crib and closer to the door until i was out of the room and he could just go to sleep by himself.  that worked super well, because i totally followed through and we aren't still doing that to this day.  just kidding.  we are totally doing that still.  although now hubs is the one that puts z to sleep and sits out in the hallway until z falls asleep.  but this is even an improvement, because after ava was born, z regressed a little bit and hubs had to stay in z's room until he fell asleep.  now he's in the hallway.  maybe soon he'll be in the guest room.  i was dead set against having these sleep issues with baby A.  she seemed different; she actually slept as a newborn.  you know, like a normal baby.  she would nurse, then poop, then sleep for 4 hours at a time, and i'd have to wake her up to feed.  like every other newborn i've seen.  except Z.  he really didn't nap during the day as a newborn and young infant.  he slept well at night usually.  but ava was pretty typical, and it freaked me out at first. i remember asking my sis in law, who is a pediatrician, if this was normal and she said it was. hahaha. anyway, ava slept so well and was so easy to get to sleep that i thought we would have no problems with her sleeping well later. but then she hit he four month sleep regression and all the development that goes on at four months and it was harder to just put her down for naps and night time. i started letting her cry it out for naps and that worked ok for a couple weeks and then all of a sudden she would not go down for naps. and if i let her CIO she would just cry forever. so i started just trying to get her to nap by rocking or nursing her, stroller rides or walking around with her in the carrier. she  would sleep about half the time and only for 25 minutes max. very rarely did she take a proper nap. this went on for about two months. it was exhausting, and my back was killing me and i couldn't get anything done and she was soooooo overtired. i started feeling so annoyed and impatient. i wasn't enjoying her at all. we went out of town a couple times and when we got back recently i decided enough was enough. after talking to my bestie and sis in law and doing tons of reading i figured out a plan for a day time schedule and naps. i wrote about that in a previous post.  so it's been almost two full weeks and she has been napping pretty well most days, a morning and afternoon nap.  not everyday, but most days, so that's good for now.  i also wanted to get her night sleep trained as well, so that she could be able to fall asleep on her own and also be sleeping in her own crib.  she has been sleeping in the rock n play next to my side of the bed but is too big for that now.  so i thought it would be a good time to move her.  but after a very inconsistent week i decided to shelve it for now.  at first, i tried to just nurse her and then rock with her and put her in the crib when she was asleep, but of course, she would wake up a certain amount of time later crying, all like 'where the hell am i and where is the milk?'.  so then i tried the pick up put down method which is exactly what it sounds like, picking up and putting down the baby a million times until they can learn to fall asleep on their own.  i thought this would be a nice, gradual way to sleep train her but it just proved to piss her off royally.  after the 27th time i picked her up and put her down, with her wailing her head off, i just brought her back to my bed out of exhaustion.  then i tried rocking her and putting her in her crib and letting her cry for a little while hoping she would eventually fall asleep but after she screamed for 30 minutes and woke z up i decided to ditch that method and brought her back to my bed.  and then i thought maybe she isn't ready and i'm definitely not ready and we haven't prepared z for the crying that will ensue and he gets all freaked out, and i haven't even picked out a sleep training method, and maybe i was being a little overzealous.  so, for now, i decided to just put together a solid bedtime routine that includes bath, pj's, prayers, milk, and then i lay down next to her in my bed until she falls asleep.  and then i'll dream feed her when i go to sleep and move her over to the pack n play that we will set up next to the bed.  and then when she can fall asleep on her own, i will transition her to her crib and figure out the best way to do that later.  i am not night weaning, so when she wakes up in the night, i'll still feed her.  and then eventually i think i'll do some sort of fading method.  but the last two nights have already been less stressful.

then we are also working on z falling asleep on his own.  so for naps, we have a routine of reading two books, singing three prayers, setting the timer for 5 minutes and cuddling until the timer goes off wherein i leave the room ( i am sitting in the hallway for now) and he is to stay in his bed and go to sleep.  at first this took 1.5 hours, but after almost two weeks he falls asleep in about 30 minutes.  he usually gets up a few times and will grab a book and read it on his bed or play with a stuffed animal, but he is making progress.  hopefully next week i can move from the hallway to ava's room.  hubs is basically doing the same thing at night, so i'm hoping this will work and he will be able to just fall asleep on his own without having to be watched from afar.

so that's where we are.  i'm not a big cry it out person, so i'm trying to figure out some gentler, more gradual ways of sleep training first and will CIO or do graduated extinction if needed.  i don't know, i waver between being so annoyed that these kids end up in our bed a lot of nights and we can't get a nice uninterrupted night of sleep and thinking that they are not always going to be struggling with sleep---going to sleep and staying asleep, and this period of time is just a sliver in their lives and in our lives.

do any of you have sleep training experiences or advice you'd like to share?  i'd like to hear it!  again.  haha.