Sleep Training

A few friends have asked how sleep training went last week, so I thought I'd update here.  It really went awesome!  I started out saying that 5 minutes would be my initial check-in; if she cried for 5 minutes, I'd go in to reassure her I was still here, rub her back, and then leave, slowly increasing the amount of time between checks, just like the Ferber method suggests.  Well, Thursday night, she woke up a total of 8 times, and only once did she make it to the 5 minute mark.  The other times, she laid back down and fell back asleep on her own....but around 4:30 she was still crying, and I decided at that point to go ahead and nurse her, which was against my initial plan, but that was ok with me.  Since then, every night has been the same.  If she wakes up, she puts herself back to sleep, and then around 4-5am, she's up, I nurse her for a few minutes, and then she's back asleep until somewhere between 6 and 7.  There was one night just recently that she woke up around 1, cried for a few minutes, then calmed down and was quiet.  Well, she had woke Jarrod up, and since she was quiet, he assumed she was back to sleep and he went in to check on her.  She, in fact, wasn't asleep, and he picked her up and brought her in to me.  Silly boy.  I just took her right back in, laid her down, and she cried for a few minutes, then fell asleep.  So, sleep training was a huge success...instead of being up every couple of hours, I'm getting much better sleep and so is Riley.  I know sleep begets sleep, and this week, she's been back to taking two naps, which is slightly annoying and throwing off my days, but we'll deal with it for now. I'm just glad she's sleeping!  Now, we'll work in a few weeks to eliminate the 4-5am feeding as we wean her completely and transition her to milk! Yikes...my baby girl is almost ONE!