Over the last few weeks I've had several conversations with other moms about sleep, both their own sleep and their children's sleep! I think you go into pregnancy and deciding to have children knowing you'll be tired and won't get any sleep, but it's not until you're really in it, that you realize it's WAAAAYYYYY worse than you were prepared for....LOL! The worst of it hits you a few weeks before you actually give birth and it usually lasts until around your child is 6 months! After that, it gets better....but never quite the same as before you had children :)
I was watching The Chew today and Daphne was talking about how she can't nap since having kids because she hears everything! I feel exactly the same way! I used to nap all the time....I LOVED a cat nap...but not anymore. Whether the kiddos are in the house or with daddy outside of the house, it's just not possible to nap anymore...I don't know what it is, but I just can't!
Now, as far as the kids sleep goes, another thing that you hear about before having kids is sleep training! Ha! No one actually tells you that you have to go through this process over and over and over again though! You think you do it once and then it's done - not true! Every time there's a "growth spurt" or some sort of a "change", you end up doing it all over again! I joke with my mommy friends that God created a way to torture parents that you never knew even existed until you had children! The piercing sound of your child screaming at bedtime is the absolute worst feeling in the world! I know I've been pretty negative so far, but I like to keep it real! It does get better eventually, but, let's not pretend! Sleep training SUCKS!
My husband and I chose to do the "cry it out" method of sleep training with our little ones. Now, this was WAAAAAAAYYYY worse with my first one than it was with my second. You've probably heard from many people before that the 2nd child is always easier than the first. Now, I don't know if I believe that's true for everyone, but in my case - it absolutely is. I believe with Deena, we had so many people around that were always holding her and picking her up and playing with her, that she became so used to the attention and being held which made sleep training that much harder. Also, as a first time mom, I slept with one eye on the monitor and one eye shut, which meant I NEVER actually slept. I was worried about every sound, toss, and turn - it never ended. We didn't even start sleep training her until she was 9 months and my doctor said if we don't do it now, we're going to have to do it later anyways and "don't you want to sleep?" he said! LOL! We started sleep training the night of her doctor's appointment and now wonder why we didn't start sooner!??!?!?!
Like I said, we did the cry it out method. Give a kiss, say goodnight, put on the music, and leave. Let her cry (or scream) for 5 minutes, go in, give her a pat, tell her it will be ok, and leave again. Let her cry (or scream) for 10 minutes and repeat the process. Keep doing it and add a few minutes to the wait time each time and eventually they fall asleep! Again, this is absolute torture for the parents listening and watching the monitor and waiting - but if you just stick with it (talk with your significant other, tell yourselves you'll give it a week of no rest) - I promise it works! It only took about 3 days of doing this and voila! We were sleeping through the night!
Now with my second one (who didn't get all the attention and wasn't being held all the time) she sort of set her own schedule, she slept when she was tired! It was lovely! But now I'm at the 6 month mark and believe I need to put her on a schedule. We started sleep training with her over a month ago and she's been lovely. She just kind of goes to sleep. We've had only one or two torturous nights with the screaming, but only for a few minutes and it's done. I also learned my lesson with this one like not letting her fall asleep while feeding, not rocking and coddling at bedtime, I don't even have a baby monitor this time around!
Now Deena, our 2 and a half year old, is back in sleep training mode in her "big girl room" and "big girl bed". We're going on 2 weeks of her staying in her bed all night :) It's fabulous, but took some work and sleepless nights! She loves nothing more than creeping into our room in the middle of the night and finding herself in our bed. We've finally stopped this by having to get up when she comes in and walk her back to her bed. Kiss on the head, tucked back in, and say goodnight again. It's exhausting but it's putting in the work now so we can have nights of sleep again! When we first moved her into her "big girl bed" around her 2nd bday, we again took the advice of our doctor to take the knob off the door and turn it around so that the lock is on the outside. He told us to leave the door unlocked but tell her we would lock it. Each time she got out of bed, we walked her back to the bed and told her we would lock the door if she got up. Did that 3 times and then on the 3rd time, actually lock the door. Then.....wait for the crying (screaming).....time it.....go in and soothe....and then eventually, she would fall asleep. We were also told to never go to bed without unlocking the door!
Now, I hope I'm not jinxing myself by writing this post, but we are officially sleep trained at my house and hoping that this lasts a while!
