Finally at some point in mid-December, we made the decision to start thinking about sleep training. As we do in most things on our life: we research for a bit, and then fairly quickly decide to outsource. And so it was with sleep training. We found a seeming miracle woman (in NYC, where else) who essentially guarantees she'll have your baby sleeping through the night in two nights -- she spends the full 48 hours with you, 24/7. On the flip side of this, it feels a bit mercenary: going from a snuggly family bed to his own crib in his own room, crying it out until he gets it right. It also doesn't come cheap: $5000 to essentially sleep train for you (she says that while she offers parents the opportunity to monitor the baby-cam with her, most just put on headphones and go get much-needed sleep).
In what's quickly becoming a Tale of Two Cities, the next day, I found a sleep consultant in Seattle who works with families who want to still co-sleep, using the "gentler" sleep method of basically doing everything else to get the baby to sleep -- besides nursing, rocking, or bouncing (our holy trinity in getting Elliot to sleep for each and every nap and evening.)
We had our first call with our Seattle consultant last Saturday, and essentially literally laughed in her face when she said that Elliot should be getting 11-12 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night (remember, he was waking up EVERY HOUR!) And kindda rolled our eyes when she suggested patting him when he got upset and wanted to nurse.
I have to hand it to Mr E, though... the first night was certainly not butterflies and rainbows, but it wasn't awful either... maybe only five minutes of intense crying, twenty minutes of light to medium crying, but really just rolling around snuggling on both of us, until he fell asleep on Tyler. By the third night, he was already meeting the definition of "sleeping through the night" (6 hours). The fourth night (which she warned us would likely be the worst night) was actually the best -- no crying at all -- just crawling on us until he got tired and fell asleep. By the sixth night, he was sleeping a solid 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep, which has gone up to 11 hours now. Un. Real. To say we had no idea it would be this easy is the biggest understatement. In fact, I've started to really look forward to the 30 minutes in bed with E before he falls asleep -- basically one big snuggle and tumbling-fest accompanied by the Sleep Sheep playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (ah, these magical moments).
The corollary to this is that WE have been getting exponentially more sleep than we have the last year (and for me, for the last two years... while I loved nearly everything about being pregnant, my inability to sleep was one of the big downsides). We literally went from utter sleep deprivation to all three of us being the happiest I remember us being in normal day-to-day mode. I don't think I've ever slept this much, well, EVER. For the last 10 days, I've been essentially in bed from 7pm to 7am (an unintended consequence of this is that my back started hurting again; as Tyler said, "it's probably not super good to be in bed for half the day.") Ha.
So what we've now discovered and have tested last night and tonight is one of us putting him to sleep and the other one... having a quiet "late" night (haha, to us, crawling into bed at 9pm is considered "late"). Amazing how the small things can feel so luxurious.
Of course, it would be all too easy for everything to be just about perfect now. We're still getting there on naps (we were fooled with an insanely easy first nap after the first night of sleep training... ten minutes to sleep with no cries) -- with a pic to capture my disbelief (I love how E and the dog are basically in the same position).
We'll get there.
And so for now... good night, blogger. Good night, computer. Good night, smart phone.
Good night, Seoul.
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