Come on, identify yourselves. How many of you know who these people are?? Well, chances are that if you've had a child that doesn't sleep well, like ours, you do! These are both doctors who have written very famous book in the parenting circles and basically both subscribe to the "cry it out" method. We finally started that with Lawson when he was about 8 months old, and it worked pretty well. Although the first night he literally cried for 2 hours (the plan is to go check on them and hug them without picking them up every 10-15 mins.) Anyway, this worked relatively well until the past 2-3 months. Lawson just hasn't been sleeping well, and had gotten to the point where we was waking up every 2-3 hours again! Anyway, Dave decided he had had enough and picked up the Weissbluth book again and started reading. We did the cry it out thing again which went well; he had a rough first night, but then the crying got much less severe the subsequent nights. We had been putting him down about 8:30 or so, but he wakes up so early! Often at 4:30 or 5:00. Weissbluth says that often children need earlier bedtimes and early to bed can mean late to rise. I had forgotten about this, but Dave reminded me and he tried it a few days ago. Well, today was Lawson's 3rd day of sleeping straight through the night and waking up about 6:00. Here's the text I got this morning from Dave...
"Guess who slept from 7:10 - 6:00am without a peep? wow. Weissbluth is king. they should give him a medal."
(He also asked if I froze last night, bc when I got home to my apt from work about 8:00 last night, the thermostat was broken. It was 60 degrees inside, and snowing outside. Fortunately, the emergency fix-it guy fixed it, and I had heat a couple of hours later!)
Hopefully our luck with Lawson will hold out, but the upheaval with move is likely to put us back into the No Sleep Zone. Hopefully, we'll get settled soon!
6 comments:
Yeah Lawson!!!! Steven goes to bed around 7:00 too and he "normally" will sleep until 6:00. Ken would like him to sleep later and suggested we keep him up later but I told him that isn't the way things work. Dave...you'll have to remind Ken for me!
Yes, Weissbluth is king. The simple formulation is "sleep begets sleep." I know this is counterintuitive, as Shawna points out, but it somehow works. At least for my kid. YMMV.
I chalk up 50% of Gracie's good disposition to proper sleep, even now at age 6 1/2. She woke up in the middle of the night two nights ago, because her ankle hurt from dance class earlier that night. And since that jazzed up her sleep and she also got to bed super late last night due to choir practice at church, she had several bouts of night terrors last night (yes, they are as bad as they sound).
Gracie's normal bedtime is 7:15-7:30. If she's not sleepy yet, she'll read until maybe 7:45. But 99% of the time, she's fast asleep by then. And she wakes up about 6:00-6:15 every day. So even at nearly age seven, she's sleeping a good 10 1/2 hrs a day. When she was Lawson's age, she still took two naps, I think (I'd have to check with Liisa on that), and she probably went to bed at like 6:30. Or earlier. And woke up at 6:00 the next day.
Glad to hear y'all are back on the Weissbluth bandwagon. All of Lawson's sleep problems sound like classic lack of sleep (to a Weissbluth acolyte like me, FWIW). I would have said something earlier, but no one asked. ;-)
OMG! I guess we have just never put our kids to bed early enough!! But if we had of, we wouldn't have gotten to see them M-F!! Neither one of us gets home from work before 5:00. I couldn't imagine putting them to bed at 6:30or 7:00.
Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby is in my opinion the best book out there. Dr. Weissbluth is great!!! I used his theorys with Olivia and she sleeps great. When i first started we had an early bedtime, but I have been able to slowly move it back as she has gotten sed to it so Kyler can see her at night. She currently sleeps from 8:30 at night until 8:00 in the morning. And she goes to sleep without any (or very little) crying. I hope Lawson keeps sleeping good, I know how tough it is to be sleep deprived.
YES! We did the Ferber method with all 3 kids and all 3 go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 8:30 am! LOVE the Ferber method! It is REALLY hard at first, but in the long run it is worth it! RCL
I guess I just don't have the time to read or just don't have the gumption to stick to a method. Oh well. I guess I'll just have kids that don't sleep enough. Glad it's working for you guys though.
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