sleeping and scheduling part 3 {some success!}

Well folks, things are finally looking up. Maybe. Haha I'm almost scared to hope anymore! But for once, it seems like Ada has made incremental progress rather than instantaneous improvement (instantaneous improvement that dies after a day or two).

I mentioned in my last sleeping post a bunch of the things I tried to break this catnap habit, but I've finally found something that seems to be working. And guess what? I had already tried it before -- sort of. The solution? Crying it out.

Now sit back and relax because this is going to be a long post . . .

When I started working with the sleep expert from the Baby Cubby blog, the first thing she helped me establish was a workable schedule. What I read in Babywise led me to believe that you can help your baby always have 3-hour cycles or 3.5-4 hour cycles as they get a bit older, but always consistently the same. Jackie told me that, rather than focusing on getting Ada to have 3-hour cycles, let her have 2.5-4 hour cycles -- a schedule with flexibility. As long as she woke up from a nap after the cycle had been 2.5 hours, let her wake. If she was still sleeping by the time 4 hours rolled around, wake her up. When I say cycles here, I mean a cycle of eat, play, and sleep. So if she is awake for one hour total, her nap should be at least an hour and a half to make it to a 2.5 hour cycle, but I could let her sleep for as long as 3 hours if she wanted to. Jackie suggests using the 2.5-4 hour cycle starting at birth and lasting all the way until baby is only taking two naps per day, which she says should happen around a year (I'm not so sure it happens so late with all babies though, as she thinks Ada should still be taking 4 naps but Ada actually does really well with 3 naps when she actually takes them).

This 2.5-4 hour cycle thing is something that Jackie taught me that I wholeheartedly believe in. I think sometimes babies need a little more sleep, and sometimes they need a little less, so this flexible schedule allows them wiggle room to get the sleep they need -- if they'll sleep longer than one 33-minute sleep cycle, that is. Meanwhile, it helps scheduling mamas (👋  that's me!) have at least somewhat of an idea of what to expect.

The second thing Jackie taught me was that I was keeping my baby up for too long. Ada was nearly 3 months old when I started working with Jackie, and I was keeping her up for 1.5-2 hours at a time (I give a range because I had already started trying different things). Jackie told me to put Ada down after one hour. And the first day I tried that, Ada napped like a champ. However, the miracle fix didn't stick. BUT, it did give me a better idea of how long to keep Ada up.

Okay, fast forward about 6 weeks. I had tried a bunch of things that Jackie suggested, mostly involving doing everything I could to get Ada back to sleep once she woke from that first sleep cycle. Sometimes they would work for a few days, sometimes they wouldn't work at all, but inevitably, they would all begin to fail. Ada was just so stubborn. It's like she knew I was trying to get her back to sleep, and she did not want to get back to sleep so she would resist my attempts. Jackie kept encouraging me to be consistent with something for a month, but it was impossible to be consistent for even a week because whatever I tried would stop working.

I had been hesitant to try letting Ada cry it out for many reasons:

1. Jackie didn't think it was a good idea. She seemed sure that we could fix the problem without this method, and I wanted to believe that was true. Plus, if I could fix the problem without making her cry a whole bunch, I definitely wanted that solution.
2. Ada was still under 4 months, and most of what I read said you shouldn't start that method until at least 4 months. 
3. I was worried it wouldn't work, and I didn't want to torture Ada for no reason. 
4. I was pretty sure that Ada could cry long enough to reach a 2.5 hour cycle.

Reason #4 was actually a huge reason why I didn't think crying it out would work. 

Let me preface by saying I actually have nothing against the cry-it-out method -- I mean, I don't like to hear Ada cry because it makes me sad, but I know she's not going to be hurt in the long run by a little -- or even a lot -- of crying, especially if I'm only letting her cry so she can get what's best for her -- sleep! 

This is why I was 100% fine to let her cry it out in order to make her start sleeping through the night. But at night, I knew I could let her cry as long as it took because at her age, she wouldn't be able to last longer than an hour or so before falling back to sleep -- which was true. The most she cried was 70 minutes, but then she went back to sleep for the rest of the night.

However, with naps, we didn't have a whole night to work with, and I worried she could out-cry her nap. But I had run out of options, so I decided to give it a week and see if I saw any improvement. 

My FIRST attempt at CIO (cry it out) looked like this: 1.5 hours awake, .5 hours asleep, .5 hours crying or calm, but awake. I only made her reach a 2.5 hour cycle, and just as I suspected, that wasn't enough time for her to cry herself back to sleep -- only enough time to make her cry for half an hour. I did it this way for two reasons: 1. A 2.5 hour cycle is supposed to be acceptable, and 2. Most of what I read said that you can "make" nap-resistant babies have an hour-long nap; if they wake up early, leave them in their crib until it's been an hour. So for both reasons, I only had her stay in there for half an hour. After 3.5-4 days of this, I couldn't do it anymore. She was EXHAUSTED because she wasn't getting any good naps, and it was starting to negatively affect her night sleep as well.

It was at this point that I decided I would do whatever it took to get her the sleep she needed, even if that meant I had to hold her for all her naps or rock her back to sleep at every single nap. My whole reason for all the effort to get her to sleep wasn't just so I could have a few hours a day to myself; it was to get her the sleep she needed. Free time was a secondary perk that I wanted, sure. But truly, I wanted her getting good sleep most of all.

So for the next two days, I tried those things -- rocking her back to sleep and even holding her for an entire nap. And guess what? THEY DIDN'T WORK. I never managed to get her back to sleep by rocking her -- like maybe for a few minutes, but not into a deep enough sleep that I could lay her down without waking her up again. And she even managed to wake up after her usual 30 minutes when I held her from the start, so I knew this wasn't going to work either.

That's when I started my SECOND attempt at CIO. This time, I made her cry until she made it back to sleep -- for up to an hour after she woke from the first sleep cycle. And it was awful. I hated hearing her cry so much! But she would cry for 40 minutes or so, and then she'd have a real nap. So the crying was worth it. Whereas with my first attempt she would cry for 30 minutes and get no benefit of extra sleep, she was now getting extra sleep. 

Sometimes she would cry 40 minutes, sometimes she would cry 20, and sometimes she would cry for a whole hour. If she didn't look close to sleep by the time the hour was up, I would get her up and start a new cycle (with feeding). 

Sometimes she'd go back to sleep for a glorious hour-long nap (or more). Sometimes she'd only go back to sleep for 20 minutes. But if she got herself back to sleep at all, even if only for 20 minutes, I would go right to her when she woke up the second time. Well, sort of. If she woke up fussy, I'd wait 5-10 minutes to see if she would fall back asleep, which she usually would. When she was actually done with her nap, she'd wake up happy.

So here we are, about two weeks later, and here's how things are going: 

1. She has slept through on quite a few naps. Definitely not all of them, and not even necessarily one per day, but probably on 4 or 5 naps in the last few days. 
2. When she does wake after one sleep cycle, she's taking less time to get back to sleep, and the crying is quite minimal. She often takes 10-30 minutes to fall back asleep now. And since she cries less during this time and then gets a full nap, I don't feel guilty at all about leaving her in her crib during that time.
3. It's still not perfect. She still has difficulties with some naps where she'll cry that full hour. Which is still awful! Sometimes I get her up from her nap after she cries for that hour, sometimes I rock her to sleep after that hour. It just kind of depends on where we're at in the day.
4. It started to go REALLY WELL for about a week, and then there were a few days where she seemed to revert to old ways. Then she seemed to do better again. So I'm going to be consistent with it for a month and see how it is after that. I mean, things can really only improve right? And I really feel like I've tried everything else, so I wouldn't know what to try next anyway.

So like I said, it's still not perfect, but I do think that someday soonish, she'll be sleeping through or returning to sleep quickly for every single nap. And her napping is already leaps and bounds better than it was before trying this method. So I do recommend it. It's a method that you can actually be consistent with, and I started seeing real results after about 5 days (and she was still getting more sleep in those first 5 days than she was before, she just had to cry a lot to get there). Also, a huge bonus is that we've completely ditched the swing, and we've ditched the binky for the most part (sometimes I'll give it to her while I'm wrapping her up for a nap if she's crying, and I'll also give it to her sometimes if I'm rocking her and she won't stop crying). She's doing most of her sleeping all on her own now (other than when I decide to rock her back to sleep because she's already cried for a long time).

A few tips -- 

1. I've swaddled Ada since birth, and in my opinion swaddling is an important factor in making this work. When Ada is able to break free from her swaddle, she'll start sucking on her hands which keeps her entertained enough to stay awake. When she's unable to move much, she gets bored more quickly. So I use a swaddle sack AND I swaddle her with a blanket on top of that, because one or the other is not enough; she needs two forms of restraint. 
2. The room needs to be cool. She was getting all hot and sweaty when she'd struggle trying to get back to sleep, so I've lowered my heat settings and turned on her fan so that she doesn't overheat with the struggle. 
3. Also, Ada is currently about 4.5 months old/20 weeks, and I've found that her waketimes can really vary. She'll do anywhere between an hour and fifteen minutes to two hours, depending on how consistent she's been with naps. An hour and forty minutes seems to be the right amount of time if everything is going well. I follow her signs more than the clock, so sometimes she starts to fuss when she's ready to sleep; other times she looks completely dazed, with glazed over eyes.
4. I have a video monitor, which makes this method much easier. I can spy on her the whole time she's sleeping/crying if I want, so I can determine how close she is to sleep or if she might be crying because she has a stuck burp or something. I can make sure she's not crying because she's stuck between the slats of the crib or something (that has NOT happened, I'm just saying that if she were crying hysterically for that reason, I'd be able to see it and go help her!).
5. Ada is my only test of this method, so I don't know what the best or worst age to try this out would be. The benefit of doing it at this age is that object permanence isn't a thing yet, so she doesn't seem to blame me for letting her cry; like she doesn't associate me with why she's crying -- she is always happy to see me, even if I'm going in to her after an hour of crying. She's also young enough that she can't cry much more than an hour and fifteen minutes without falling asleep. I'm not sure how much longer she could go, because I don't let her go past that, but most of the time she's asleep before she hits that point.