Last night was the night we decided to start "sleep training" Beia. I don't know if what we did is technically considered sleep training though, since we can't figure out what sleep training actually refers to. Getting baby to fall asleep on her own? Getting baby to sleep through the night without waking? Getting baby to fall asleep for the night at a specific time? Who knows? Regardless, after skimming a few articles and having a few spotty conversations about the topic, we dove in and tried this:
Beia always eats around 6:30pm and then again around 8:30pm. In between the two feedings she gets quite fussy, but after the second feeding (which includes bath time) she will fall asleep for the night. By "night" we mean the longest stretch of sleep she will have in a given evening. Usually this ranges anywhere from around 4hr 45min to 6hr 15min. We pray for the latter.
Anyway, she is usually good about getting to sleep after we feed her as she is pretty tired by then. In addition, she's been practicing getting to sleep on her own during nap times. So we thought that perhaps Beia was getting overtired by the time her 8:30pm feeding rolled around and that maybe—just maybe—we could move UP her bedtime AND get her to sleep longer as a result. Wishful thinking, we know.
So last night we did Beia's bath during her 6:30pm feeding, and put her down for the night immediately after. Although she didn't fall asleep right away, she only minimally fussed and eventually fell asleep within the half hour. She did wake up and squirm and fuss for a bit around 8:30pm (presumably since she was used to being up at this time), but she fell back to sleep after I went in to check on her. Then she slept. And slept. And slept. She didn't wake up again until around 3:45am, which is her usual middle of the night feeding time. At that point she'd slept 7hr 15min! HURRAY! PROGRESS! Of course at that point I went in to feed her (after all, we saw "eye balls") and then she went to sleep again, until her normal wake up time of about 7am.
What a good, good little bean. We hope it continues and will try again tonight. Cross your fingers...
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