Sleep training & Glee

[Disclaimer: this is a very long read! It started as an email to my dear cousin who was asking about how I sleep trained Xinyi. Then it turned into a post mostly for myself, just to remember. And now, I'm hoping it will help some mommies and daddies who are thinking of or are in the process of sleep training, because sleep training is daunting!]

I've watched the TV show Glee three times. The first time was when Shane was studying for the Bar. I watched the first two or three seasons on Netflix, marathon style. The second time was while seasons 4 through 6 was airing on TV. And the third time was when we started sleep training Xinyi. I started over from the beginning because I needed something to distract myself from hearing my baby cry :T.

It took us 5 months to start the sleep training process. The first three months were an absolute blur. Even though I had what I considered to be extensive experience with children, I wasn't ready for that newborn/4th trimester phase. It was 24-7, day and night, night and day, a never ending two to three hour cycle of baby wakes, baby eats, baby plays, baby sleeps. Eventually, I just kind of went with it. But then she started a two week phase of colicky behavior. She'd cry from 9pm to 11pm, and sometimes midnight or 1am. It was awful. Then miraculously, she started sleeping more, somewhere around 2.5-3 months old... I was so happy! And then she stopped sleeping well, right around 4 months old, and went back to waking up every two hours. That's when I wrote about sleep deprivation.

Unfortunately, from two months to four months old, Xinyi didn't grow according to a healthy growth curve. She wasn't gaining enough weight. So I held her and didn't let her cry. For the first 5 months of Xinyi's life, I bounced her to sleep and held her for every single nap (40 minutes to 2 hour naps, up to four times a day), and nursed her or bounced her to sleep every time she woke up (up to 8 times a night at the worst around 4.5 months old).

During those many hours of holding my baby for her naps, I read countless articles, blogs, and yahoo group question-answer-comment sites about sleep training. I stumbled upon them while googling, "Why doesn't my baby sleep?" and "How can I help my baby sleep?" Even though I had read all the baby sleep books prior to Xinyi's arrival (thanks Lindsey and Christina for your suggestions!), I think I learned the most about baby sleep during those nap time Google sessions.

In my opinion, the four best sleep training resources found on the Internet are: 

1) The Baby Sleep Site [a professional sleep training resource - tons of articles, sleep training plans, and access to sleep training consultants]
2) Troublesome Tots [a mom's look at sleep training - a little more down to earth and digestible]
3) A detailed Sleep / Wake Time Chart [to be explained below*]
4) A Facebook Group for Respectful Sleep Training/Learning [a Facebook support group for sleep training, it currently has 20,000+ members. Yeah. Seriously.] 

* Apparently, babies are only able to stay awake for X amount of time before they need to sleep again. This amount of time is called "wake time" in the sleep training community. You can see one popular chart below. 

As you can see, the time babies are able to stay awake grows as they grow. But when your baby takes 40 minute naps, it gets pretty tedious tracking how long the baby has been awake, and when does the baby need to sleep again, along with tracking when the baby needs to eat and how many diapers has she had... oi. Exhausting.

The more detailed Sleep / Wake Time Chart came in handy for me because it was much more detailed. It broke down not only wake times, but how much day sleep the baby needs, how much night sleep the baby needs, how long you should wait before responding to a middle of the night cry, etc. Xinyi's sleep was a mystery to me, and I needed a lot of help trying to figure it out. This chart, of all the ones I've seen, was the most helpful to me.

Okay, so now let's get back to our sleep training story. By five months old, Xinyi was back to a good weight and we had finished our scheduled travel to see family. There were no more excuses. I was tired, both physically and emotionally, and Shane was tired for me. We were ready to sleep train.

There are five major styles of sleep training. I debated in my head, over and over and over again, which one should we do? I had tried the fading, gentle, no cry approach, but it wasn't working. But it broke my heart to think about Xinyi crying. So after much research, reading, praying, crying, and discussing, we chose pick up put down, with check and console as a backup. Here is a really great article summarizing the pick up put down method according to age.

June 1st was the night we would start sleep training. I really wanted to back out of starting to sleep train. But Shane was strong for me. He graciously told me that he absolutely trusted me, that I had done more than enough reading and research, and whatever I thought was best, he would do. So I asked him to do the sleep training, to do the physical pick up put down. I asked him to do the sleep training for two reasons: 1) because I wasn't sure I would be consistent and hold strong through her crying, and 2) because other moms had success with their husbands sleep training. When moms, especially nursing moms, try to sleep train, babies tend to cry extra hard because they are so used to being nursed. They smell their momma and want to be nursed because that's what they are used to. When dads do the sleep training, the babies know they won't be nursed, and they sense that something has changed. This is daddy, not mommy. It's a cue for the baby that things are changing.

Pre-sleep training, our bedtime routine was bath (every other night), change diaper, lotion, put on pajamas, read her bedtime book, put in sleep sack, nurse to sleep (20-30 minutes), hold for 30-40 minutes, pray she would stay asleep while I used my ninja skills to put her down. Often times she would wake up and I'd have to nurse her and hold her again for 30-40 minutes. Other times, she would stay asleep, but then she'd wake up 40 minutes later, right when I was drifting off to sleep. So I'd get up and nurse and hold her again.

[Random sleep training research note: 40 minutes is the length of a baby's first sleep cycle. At 40 minutes, babies typically transition into deeper sleep. Or, if they were nursed or rocked to sleep, they wake up startled, unable to transition into deeper sleep because they don't know how to put themselves back to sleep. Basically, one of the blogs I read explained that the way a baby falls asleep is the way a baby will want to and expects to fall back asleep when they wake. If the baby falls asleep to sucking a pacifier, they will cry out when the pacifier drops because the only way the baby knows how to fall asleep is by sucking a pacifier. Same for nursing to sleep. Same for being rocked or bounced to sleep.]

As we started to sleep train, I knew Xinyi needed to learn how to fall asleep by herself -- no nursing or rocking or bouncing to sleep. Our bedtime routine changed to bath (every other night), change diaper, lotion, put on pajamas, nurse, read her bedtime book (the same book every night), put in sleep sack, turn on sound machine, turn off light, give baby to daddy. It was important to put nursing much earlier in the routine to teach her that nursing to sleep was no longer the way she would fall asleep.

Our plan for the first night of sleep training was after I gave the baby to Shane, he would sing a song to her, then put her down, leave the room, and close the door. When she cried, he was to wait 5 seconds before going in, pick her up, sing to her until she stops crying (or a maximum of 5 minutes) and then put her down, leave the room, and close the door. Repeat until she stops crying. This is classic by the book pick up put down. We were prepared to do this for up to 3 hours. If she was still awake after three hours, I would nurse her to sleep and we would try again for up to one week. All the experts say you need to be consistent for at least 5 to 7 days before moving on to a different method.

What really happened on the first night was this -- Shane took over, sang to her, put her down, left the room, closed the door, and Xinyi wailed. Shane waited 5 seconds, and repeated this two or three times. Then Shane came out and said, we need to wait longer than 5 seconds. We're not even giving her the chance to self-soothe. So he started waiting 10 seconds. Then 30 seconds. Then 1 minute. Then 5 minutes. I watched Glee with headphones while Shane diligently went in, soothed the baby, came out, drank some water, and repeated the whole process. Over and over and over. I'm slightly OCD and have type A tendencies... so for 9 weeks, I kept detailed notes about our sleep training journey. If you want to, you can see them here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sKJXlRWxVumB1tHn_gUVNwU_KFWE-7X2x50FRaJcGb8/edit?usp=sharing

The first night, Shane picked Xinyi up, sang to her, and put her down 13 times over the course of 1 hour and 7 minutes. After the 13th put down, she slowly stopped crying and fell asleep... I was shocked. I really thought there was a chance she'd cry for the full 3 hours! But our little darling was ready :). Then 47 minutes later, she woke up again. I was prepared for that as well. But for the first time in 5 months, Shane went to her instead of me. After three pick up put downs, she went back down!!! And she slept until 4am! I went in nursed her and knew she shouldn't be nursed to sleep. So when she was done, I put her back in her crib wide awake, crawled back in bed, and stared at the monitor. She fell asleep! By herself! And she slept until 7am, so I nursed her again, put her down, and she slept until 9am! I was in heaven!

The next night, Shane wisely decided to start the wait intervals at 5 minutes, and it only took 34 minutes and 4 pick up put downs for her to fall asleep! The same thing happened night 3. But night four, she cried a long 50 minutes. Fortunately, from all my reading, I knew it was common for there to be a "burst" night. Basically, the baby figures out that things are changing and she doesn't like it, so she holds out longer and cries longer to see if she can make things go back the way they were before. By staying consistent through the hard burst night, the baby usually learns and settles into the new routine. This was very true for us, because night 5 went back to 27 minutes, night 6 took 15 minutes and night 7 only took 2 minutes.

[Random sleep training research note: This is why most experts suggest trying one method consistently for 5-7 days. The baby needs the parent(s) to be consistent to learn how to fall asleep independently, and the 5-7 days helps you get past the first burst night. Most burst nights happen on days 4 or 5, and again at day 10-14.]

Over the next nine weeks, I continued to document every single night, how long it took for her to fall asleep, how many pick up put downs, when her last nap was, how long her last nap was, the total day time sleep, and the total previous night sleep. I studied my own chart every day and even more when nights went a little more poorly. I tried so hard to see if I could fix anything, trying to see the patterns and trends, trying to make things perfect. I tried to combine all the knowledge I had gleaned from the Internet with Xinyi's trends and patterns. Then 9 weeks and 2 days in, I stopped taking notes and accepted that some nights are just going to be harder than others. Sometimes the baby needs to cry a little more to settle herself. Other times she is just perfectly ready for bed. I accepted that I couldn't control her sleep or if she was going to cry or not. It took me a long time to accept that. Sometimes I still have trouble accepting that.

Two weeks after we started sleep training, we started nap training. This time, I was the one to pick up and put down. At this point, she was 5.5 months old and taking three, sometimes four, naps a day. I wasn't sure how nap training would go, but I knew from my reading that by night training her first, it would help nap training to just sort of fall into place on its own. Amazingly, that is what happened! Still, in type A fashion, I took copious notes in the same spreadsheet. I tried to make sure her wake times were perfect, and did the same routine every time before every nap. I was reading about other babies her age that napped for 2-3 hours at a time. I was floored. Xinyi continued to nap for 40 minutes at a time, several times a day. Nothing I did made it better. But still I considered it a victory because I wasn't holding her for those naps! I now had 40 minutes of freedom. I could sit in a room that wasn't dark and quiet!

[Random sleep training research note: Using blackout shades and white noise helps baby to sleep both during the day and at night. I was really skeptical of this before I put up our blackout shades. And by blackout shades, I mean $5 pieces of black paper from Home Depot with tin foil taped to the back... But I can say I'm absolutely certain Xinyi sleeps until 9 because of our fabulous back out shades. She naps better with blackout shades too! And it doesn't interfere with her night time sleep. I was afraid of that, but she has never taken a nap longer than 2 hours... ever. But she sleeps 10 hours for her first stretch of night sleep. We use these blackout shades when we travel, and we use this sound machine.]

Our sleep training journey took us five months to start. For the next baby (if God so blesses us), we will sleep train earlier. Maybe even start at birth with good sleeping habits. But as first time parents, we just didn't know any better. I don't think that the pick up put down method would work for every baby. In fact, I know that is true from all the Facebook posts I read in the Sleep Training group. But it worked for us.

Sleep training is a funky thing. But in my opinion, it all comes down to a few things:
1) Be consistent. Whatever method you choose, be consistent with it. Including in the middle of the night. The first few nights, it will be super tempting to soothe your baby the way you normally do. But the less consistent you are, the longer sleep training will take.
2) If the daddy is willing, let him do the sleep training. Shane says that sleep training wasn't too hard on him. He was able to mentally separate the task that needed to be done from the crying. And now, his portion of the bedtime routine is the favorite part of his day :).
3) Do what you think will be best for you and for your baby. Pick up put down was best for us because I have a very supportive husband who was willing to help me sleep train. Pick up put down was also best for Xinyi because she is calmed by being picked up. Some babies aren't calmed and only escalate by being picked up and put down.
4) When necessary, be flexible and adjust. I know this seems contradictory to point #1. But try to think of it within the context of #1, #2, and #3. Sleep training really does require consistency, but you know your baby best. Shane made the right decision of being flexible and modifying the pick up put down method on our first night of sleep training. By letting Xinyi cry a little longer than the classic pick up put down method, she was able to learn to self-soothe while still being comforted. If the method you choose isn't working for you or for your baby (maybe your husband really needs his sleep and can't help or your baby just hates the checks from the check and console method), think about what is working and what isn't working, be flexible, and try something different. At the very least, try sleep training for one night. Your baby might just surprise you, just like ours did.

In the end, for sleep training to be successful for our family, I had to learn to let go of control, and trust that Xinyi would be able to work out how to put herself to sleep and self-soothe. It was really hard to do it, and I don't think I could have stayed strong without Shane and without Glee. But I'm really thankful that Xinyi is sleep trained.

Before we sleep trained, I felt like a failure when it came to Xinyi's sleep habits. I wanted her to sleep, I knew she needed to sleep, but I just didn't know how to help her sleep other than nursing her, bouncing her, and holding her. When she was newborn to 2-3 months old, she napped in the baby carrier, in my arms, out and about, wherever. Then when she was 3-5 months old, she needed the white noise machine, a dark room, and the swaddle. I think I sat in a dark, quiet room, bouncing and holding my baby for 2-3 hours a day, every day, for 2 months. Then at night, I would spent 1.5 hours trying to get her down for the night, only for her to wake 40 minutes later, and for me to spend another 1.5 hours trying to get her down. I'd have trouble falling asleep because I would hear phantom cries, and then when I was almost asleep, I'd hear real cries. I would bounce and cry and pray and beg her to sleep. I'd get frustrated and sad and angry and then, I'd feel hopeless. This was day in, day out, for almost 3 months.

The process of sleep and nap training was not easy. I'm not sure any parent would say that hearing your baby cry is easy. But the end result has been good for her, and good for us. Xinyi is a well rested and happy baby, and naptime and bedtime are exciting times for us. We get to hold our baby and sing to her, put her down, and watch her get comfortable on the monitor. Now don't get me wrong, it's not always perfect. Sometimes she rolls around, sits up or stands on the edge of the crib, and some nights she even lets out a few cries. Some nights she still needs us to go in and pick her up and sing to her one more time. But soon enough, she sits down, lays her sweet head down, sucks her thumb and falls asleep.

Now that Xinyi is sleep trained, I have parts of my day back. I don't sit in dark, quiet rooms for hours on end anymore. I don't hear phantom cries at night, and I sleep at least 7-8 hour straight before Xinyi wakes for her first feed at 7am. After we started nap training, Shane looked at me and said, "You are happier." I hadn't realized it, but it was and is true. Our sweet baby sleeps roughly from 9pm to 9am, with one 7am feed. Sleep has made the three of us very happy. And seeing this sweet sight in the morning? It can't be beat :).

Update [2/12/16]: Baby girl started sleeping through the night with only the occasional night feeds around 11 months old. Between 11 and 12 months old, she slowly went more and more nights where she didn't wake to nurse at 7am. Then right around 1 year old, she stopped waking to nurse all together! A beautiful 12 hours of sleep each night!

Hurrah! I know there are many babies who start sleeping through the night at 4, 5, or 6 months, but I'm grateful for the all the night feeds, and grateful that she now sleeps through the night. For the mommas considering sleep training, however old your baby is, it is hard, but it is worth it! You have all my love -- wherever you are, whoever you are -- and you have all my support!