Moving Harry Into His Own Room + Sleep Training

Our sleep training story started off like so many other new parents. We were SO tired. It came out of nowhere. Harry was the best sleeper for his first 3.5 months of life, even starting to sleep through the night around 6 weeks. At 3.5 months he simply stopped. He was putting up fights against naps, bedtime, and started waking every 1-2 hours throughout the night and was almost impossible to get back to sleep. It was really rough. He started rolling over during this time, and didn't want to stay asleep on his back, but would also roll onto his stomach to sleep and then wouldn't want to be there. 

Last week we made the decision to call in some reinforcements. We started working with Arielle Driscoll from Expect To Sleep Again, who worked with us to on a sleep training method, as well as re-working Harrison's schedule, and understand what was going array and how to fix it ASAP....!

These are the key areas that have gotten Harrison sleeping through the night in under a week.

1. We moved him into his own room

One of the main issues Arielle pointed out was that Harrison was still sleeping in our room. He was originally in a basinette next to our bed, and once he grew out of that we actually moved his crib into our room. Yet, lately we noticed that every night as we came upstairs to get ready for bed, even if Harry had been sleeping soundly for hours, he would wake up like "so glad you guys are here, let's play!".

As most new moms know, the American Pediatric Association recommends your baby sleeps in the same room as you the first 6 months, and ideally first year. They say this could potentially reduce the risk of SIDS, so naturally no one is going to take that chance. While this is the statistic, there are also many studies that say after 4 months it is perfectly safe for a baby to sleep in their own (safe sleep) environment. 

I personally think it's a family decision. Many co-sleep for the first year, and it works perfectly fine, others for the first 3 weeks. We decided to test the waters, and spent a few nights in our guest room, while Harry took our master suite (must be nice). He slept so much more soundly, so that weekend we made the decision to move him into his own room.

2. We adjusted his schedule

One thing Arielle noticed right away was Harry's wake/sleep schedule was off, and he was taking his naps way too early in the day, which created too long of a wake time right before bed, making him overtired and therefore too restless to go to bed when he needed to. Harry now has 3 naps, the first around 8:30/9AM, the second around 12:30/1PM, and then his third catnap around 3:30/4PM. If this gets skipped, bedtime is pushed up to 5PM, otherwise bedtime is 6PM!

3. We created a bedtime routine

1. Bath

2. Pajamas

3. Milk

4. Read a book + sing a lullabye

5. Down in crib

4. We followed the Ferber sleep training method

This seemed to be the sleep training method that would work best for Harrison and us. Basically, you wait in intervals to go back into the room to soothe (not pick up, not talk to, just soothe by rubbing his back or head), and the intervals get longer each night. Harrison has responded well to this method and happy rested baby means happy rested parents.