Sleep Lady Shuffle

At 13 months, we have finally decided to do some disciplined sleep training, because Melina is not sleeping through the night, and, even worse, wakes up every 40 minutes between 8 and 11:00 p.m., and takes about 20 minutes to fall back asleep each time. Actually, her night wakings aren't that bad (I don't mind waking up at 5:00 to nurse her) but lately it takes so long to get her to fall asleep (and back asleep) that one of us is constantly with her in the evenings. She obviously does not know how to soothe herself or fall back asleep on her own, and it's driving us crazy.

I own 5 or 6 sleep books. Here's a summary of what they say, or at least how I interpret them:

Dr. Sears Baby Book. Co-sleep until the baby doesn't want to co-sleep anymore, or until it drives you crazy. "Cry it out" methods break the bond between parent and child and are unnecessarily harsh.

No Cry Sleep Solution. Agrees with Sears; offers different ways to get the baby to sleep without any tears. (We tried these, but either we weren't doing them right or they didn't work for Melina. They require a huge amount of discipline that we probably don't have.)

Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Guide to... something or other. It's a long title. Basically this one says it's OK to let the baby cry as long as you are right there suffering along side her. Gradually you move yourself away from the crib until you're out the door and the baby is sleeping through the night. You're supposed to apply the "sleep lady shuffle" (waiting with the baby) every time she wakes up during the night.

Sleeping Through The Night: This one says to let the baby cry it out by herself, with you checking on her occasionally, but you only need to do it the first time she goes down every night.

Ferber: can't remember the title of the book (I don't actually own this one), but it's the oldest of the "cry it out" manuals and has you go in to check on the baby at regular intervals while they cry, then space the intervals out longer and longer.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: This one is has the strictest approach, called "extinction," which kind of gives me the chills. You put the baby in her room, close the door, and let her cry without checking on her until she falls asleep.

After reading all of these (or parts of them), we made up our own approach. For the last three nights we've been putting Melina down at 8:00 or so (her usual bedtime). We sing to her, rock her, etc., until she's almost out, then put her in the crib. Then we wait in the room about 5 feet from her. Jeff usually watches soccer with his headphones on and when I did it tonight I started out reading by her crib and then moved over to the bed to work on the computer. Actually she seemed to cry less when I was further away and when I didn't look at her. Anyway, for the first two nights I didn't think I could take crying, so I went out shopping and bought an extremely expensive bra at Nordstrom (what was I thinking??) and two installments of Lord of the Rings DVDs at Borders. (It's probably good that I was on duty tonight).

Anyway, we're doing this only until 11:00 p.m., instead of all night. It may take a little longer since we're not doing it every single time she wakes up, but since we are both working it saves us from becoming sleep-deprived zombies. I figure if we do it consistently every night, she WILL learn how to put herself to sleep, and that will carry through to the night wakings.

For the first two nights, she cried for an hour and 45 minutes each. Tonight, with me on duty, she cried for an hour and a half. Actually she didn't cry the entire time, but fussed a bit and sat quietly for a while too. Finally she just laid down and fell asleep. It's kind of disappointing that it didn't take 15 minutes tonight, or three minutes, as other people have experienced, but at least it took LESS time. So maybe we're getting somewhere. It's hard to be very hopeful when it still takes more than an hour to fall asleep.

The only thing that really helps me through this is that I know it will help her (and us) in the long run to know how to fall asleep, and during the day she has been the same happy, talkative, social little baby she always was. I haven't noticed any difference at all in clinginess or temperament, apart from being a little more tired.

I'll keep you posted about how it goes for the next couple of days.