It took us an entire year, but with the help of the Children’s Hospital sleep clinic and our pure will, we did it! Delaney started sleeping through the night on November 12, 2015. It has been seamless for over a month now, which is just incredible!

Here’s what we did and I hope we can learn from this next time. I’m also adding here, advice for myself for next time of what not to do.

1. Consolidate time in bed. This was essentially our “diagnosis” from the specialist. While we were doing a good job of putting Delaney down for bed and naps at consistent times, we were offering too much time for sleep and/or crying. For months, we would put a fussy Delaney down for sleep and let her cry, because sometimes after 20-30 minutes of crying she would fall asleep. But, when she didn’t, I’d take her out of her crib and walk her in the stroller to let her take a nap. It would take anywhere from 5-45 minutes of walking for her to finally pass out, at which point she would sometimes sleep for more than an hour. This created a serious issue of her not having enough “wake time” between naps or bedtime and according to the doc, this was the primary issue. Another thing that happens when you are so desperately tired is that you are irrational overnight. When Delaney would wake up, we started bringing her into bed after letting her cry for more than 30-45 minutes because then none of us were sleeping. This taught Delaney that is she cries long enough, she will eventuall get what she wants. Makes sense but when you are tired, you just need sleep and I don’t blame us! Finally, Delaney seemed to need to go to bed at 7pm, which was working for a while as she slept between and was less grumpy when she got 11 hours of sleep or so. The problem was that she never slept completely through the night on this schedule for more than a couple days at a time…ever! To solve this, we made a new schedule.
2. Schedule, Schedule, Schedule.From the very beginning, we knew this was the smoking gun when it comes to getting your baby to sleep – but just because we had a schedule, doesn’t mean we had the right schedule. Putting the baby to bed at the same time for naps and bedtime is obviously the most important thing, but really, it’s the importance of wakeup time that made the difference for us. We bumped Delaney’s bedtime to 9pm and woke her up at 6:30am, every single day no matter what. The first week was torture. None of us slept at all and Delaney cried SO MUCH. It was horrible. But we stuck to it and eventually it started regulating. With this, we also put her down for naps at 9:30 and 2:30. On the days she cried, I let her cry for 15 minutes and if she didn’t fall asleep by then, nap was over! Also, torture but we did it. She was swollen and miserable for almost a month. It slowly got better and then terrible, and then we moved to the other room! We slept on an air mattress for a month in the family room.
3. Drop Feedings. When Delaney would wake up in the middle of the night, it got to the point that I’d nurse her. Duh, I know this is a bad idea but oftentimes, it’s all she needed to calm back down and go back to bed. After a while, however, she always needed something more. A little longer being held, another feeding, maybe some time laying in bed with us. It was crazy and it spiraled out of control because we were SO FLIPPING TIRED. To do this, we offered milk in a bottle – 3oz, then 2oz, then 1oz if she was resistent. Then, we offered water in the bottle. Just a little if she really needed soothing. Eventually, we cut it and had to let her cry. Fortunately, with the schedule, this all ended up really solving itself but cutting back on these feedings a separating the association was helpful.
4. Consistency. We made major efforts in the cry it out method for months. In fact, it turned out that this actually hurt our efforts in getting Delaney to sleep because we would let her cry for more than an hour (often), but eventually, we’d give in and I’d feed her or bring her into bed because come on, we were going crazy with no sleep! The problem is that she eventually associated the need to cry for long amounts of time with eventually getting what she wanted. “If I cry for two hours, she will feed me.” I underestimated her intelligence and it backfired. You can’t decide to crack down on a certain rule after you’ve given into it so many times. We often had the rule of, “If she wakes up after 4am, I’ll feed her because she must be hungry but if it’s 12 or 2, we’re letting her cry.” At the time, this really did seem to make a lot of sense. But in retrospect, it was absolutely insane. The baby doesn’t know what time it is and she doesn’t care! If she sometimes gets a feeding when she wakes up, she’s going to expect it every time.
5. Giving her space. We always gave Delaney a few minutes before “rescuing” her from her crib. But, when we got serious about the sleep, we left the physical room. For most people, this isn’t an issue because you have a nursery that your child sleeps in – but we don’t. We are in a 1br and we had nowhere else to put her. So, we left and set up the air mattress in the family room. For an entire month (crazy, I know), we slept on this. We inflated at night and deflated in the morning – but we slept! Who knows if this actually made a difference, but while she figured out her schedule, us being out of the room seemed to help.
6. Minimize Associations. Pacifiers, bottles, nursing, etc. are all great in the beginning but create problems. Luckily for us, Delaney dropped her paci while teething and we offered her a lovey (stuffed duck, now giraffe) that she slept with for comfort. The nursing was her biggest issue and something that I’m sure I’ll find is a concern next time too – but if you can drop those overnight feedings with the help of a more consolidated sleep schedule, you’re likely better off. This is obvious but worth noting.

For people whose kids don’t sleep, I would say that the schedule is the most important thing. Sucking it up with a sleepy, moody baby for a while is worthwhile if you eventually get to sleep through the night. Sleep deprivation is absolutely horrid and it will most definitely drive you insane. For our next kid (not coming anytime soon, nice try!), I hope we can learn from what we’ve done with Delaney. Even though it took forever, I’m really proud of us for going through what we did and surviving. You really don’t get it unless you’re in it and I will rightfully defend us and our crazy obsession with her sleep schedules to anyone and everyone who encountered us. Do what you need to do to get sleep – and try not to make too many enemies in the process.