Sleep Training

Eden started sleeping "through the night" (7-8 hours at a stretch) at 8 weeks old. Except for the occasional hiccup due to sickness, teething, developmental stuff, or random whatever, she's never looked back. At bedtime would go through the bedtime routine, lay her down drowsy but awake, and for the most part she'd go to sleep pretty easily.

Then, in July, something happened.

We think it was a combination of switching from a crib to a toddler bed, the smoke alarms in her room going off (for no good reason) shortly after that and totally freaking her out, and typical toddler testing, but Eden was no longer sleeping well at all. To get her to stay in bed, we had to either lie down with her or sit next to her and rub her back until she fell asleep. And then, about 3 hours later, she'd be awake again. And then a couple of hours later she'd be awake again. And again. And again. Sometimes she'd just skip the whole going to sleep part in the middle - one night she was awake, and alternately screaming and sobbing for 4 hours. She started rejecting Bryan as well - only Mommy could get her to sleep, unless Mommy was working late.

We were all totally exhausted. Bryan caught a cold just before Montreal (two and a half weeks ago) and he's still fighting the effects. I was a zombie at work - in my first trimester and couldn't focus at all. I would put my head on my desk for half an hour in the afternoon, and other than that I was pretty much daydreaming about sleeping. Oh, those good old days when I could get at least 7 hours at a stretch!! Eden was irritable in the mornings (we'd wake her up at 8:00, floppy little zombie girl) and in the evenings (she was so overtired). She started either refusing to nap at all, or (at daycare) napping a realllly long time (once 4 hours!!).

Bryan and I tried everything we could think of. I'll spare you the details, because then this post would be ridiculously long, but suffice it to say pretty much nothing worked. Especially early on, we'd end up giving in and either sleeping in her room or putting her in our bed. Neither, obviously, was ideal.

So, at a loss, we called in reinforcements.

First, I got some great advice from a sweet friend with a two-year-old who told me she thought (as I suspected) that it was at least partly a discipline problem. That was hard to hear, but awesome to know that someone outside the situation had an idea, and it reinforced the nagging in the back of our minds and steeled us to focus more on discipline, even (and maybe especially) during the day.

And then we made an appointment with a sleep expert who works as a consultant and who - for a small fee which was some of the best money we have ever spent on Eden, no kidding - spoke with us over the phone for an hour and a half about our problems and helped us make an action plan. So, now, we're sleep training our toddler. We both thought the sleep consultant's advice was extremely helpful (and if anyone needs one, email me for her name. I would highly recommend her - she does it over the phone so she could theoretically work with anyone who reads this blog!). Her expert advice for our particular situation, with a lot of science to back it up, basically boiled down to two major points:

• Major point #1: Mommy and Daddy are both Eden's parents, and Eden doesn't get a choice about who puts her to bed or calms her down in the middle of the night. We have to teach her that we both love her, we're both here for her, and she's not the boss. To put that into practice, the person who puts her down and/or goes in at night has to appear totally random to her. A related point is NO RESCUE. If she's frustrated with one, and asks for the other, the answer is sorry honey, too bad. You're safe and loved and cared for with both of us, and you don't call the shots. (Amy gets credit for this point as well).
  
• Major point #2: We're taking a gradual approach (we all agreed in our case it was probably best for everyone) and slowly weaning Eden from each of us at night. This involves basically taking several incremental steps from where we are now to where we used to be, taking a few days at each step (a la Baby Whisperer).

Obviously there is a lot more detail to it than that (she was delightfully specific about how to implement the plan), but these are the basics, and we are really excited to see how it goes. We're motivated and ready to make this happen. Now that we've had a couple of days and nights of rest and rejuvination on our do-nothing vacation on the south shore (more on that later, suffice it to say we didn't have to venture more than 200 feet for anything, including a huge playground and the ocean, and it was awesome), we're more rested and ready than ever. And we love our daughter enough to fight her on this.

So - here we go.