Sleep Training

We’ve had a bad history with sleep, my baby and I. I tried on several occasions when I was really desperate to sleep train her, but with no success. Probably because the times I tried were when I was at my most desperate, like when she turned out to be teething for the first time.

With Eloise approaching 10 months old and still waking 2 – 3 times a night, we thought it was really time to try and put an end to the night feeds and then night waking.

We had advice from our paediatrician, who suggested a method where we could wait to go in and feed her at night in increasing intervals, and when feeding her, pull her off earlier than usual so she could fall asleep on her own.

We tried this method for several nights and it did nothing.

Next we tried the Ferber method, where we let her cry and went in every 10 minutes to talk to her, but didn’t pick her up or feed her. The first night she cried for an hour and a half. Miserable.

A few days of this and things were improved – I no longer was doing night feeds! – but were not great, as she would get more upset after seeing me go in.

We had a meeting with Dr Michel Cohen, who is a sleep expert, and he basically told us we were doing everything wrong (d’oh). His advice was to shut the door after her night feed, and don’t go back in till 7am.

This sounded barbaric to us, but we were heartened by our success from the previous nights, so decided to give it a shot. Night one, she woke up and cried for 45 mins, then slept till 5am, cried for an hour, then slept till 7:30. Nights two and three, slept from 6:45pm – 6:30am solid. Night four, slept till 5:45am, cried for 25 mins, then slept till 7:30. Night five, slept 6:45pm – 8:30am. AMAZING!!!!

I can’t believe it’s actually working, and we’re actually getting sleep! Such a miracle.