We're in for a looooong night....

Well, tonight begins our first night of sleep coaching. After 15 months of sleep deprivation (and even more if you count all of those late night pee breaks while I was pregnant), I'm desperate for a solution to our sleeping woes. I went to a Sleep Lady seminar this week. The Sleep Lady (aka Kim West) has a method called the Sleep Lady Shuffle. Basically, what this means is that you put your child into his crib drowsy and then sit next to his bed until he's asleep. You can pick him up if he's really throwing a fit, but you don't want him to fall asleep in your arms. You're "coaching" him to fall asleep on his own, while being there in the room with him to let him know that you haven't just abandoned him (which is why I couldn't bring myself to do the Ferber method). You also do this same thing when he wakes up in the middle of the night (which I'm really dreading). You do this for 3-4 nights, then you "shuffle" your chair to the doorway (instead of next to the crib). After a few days, you "shuffle" yourself out to the hallway.

My wonderful husband has agreed to take on the first few nights of coaching. As I began typing this post, I could hear Hudson still upstairs crying. We started at 6:50p and I was expecting him to go for hours (Hudson has a willpower like no one else I've ever met). Well, I heard someone in our living room (I'm in the office on the first floor) so I ran up to see what the sound was. It was Ryan! I looked at the clock and it was 8:01p! After only 71 minutes, Hudson was asleep! Let's hope the rest of the night goes as smoothly!

I'll try to post updates throughout the week. (A little something called a dissertation has been cutting in on my blogging time!)

UPDATE: I was thinking that I'll post an update each night that we do this coaching so that maybe other people thinking about the method can learn from what we've done. I thought it would be most helpful to give some background information on Hudson and his sleep.

Hudson is 15 months old. When he was first born, he was a pretty good sleeper. Up until about 6 months, he would only wake up around 1-2x/night to nurse. Right at 6 months, his sleep went down hill and never recovered. I think sleep regressions and teething are to blame (for great info on sleep regressions, check out askmoxie.org or the book "The Wonder Weeks"). He started waking multiple times each night. Before we started to sleep coach, he was waking up every 1.5-2 hours all night long.

Early on, we fell into the habit of nursing to sleep. I nursed him to bed every single night. I would wait until he was asleep and then put him down. We never did the "drowsy, but awake" thing. If Ryan would try to put him to bed, he would have to walk him up and down our hallway for about an hour while Hudson rested his head on Ryan's shoulder and eventually fell asleep. At every night wakening we had to use one of these methods (nursing or walking). So you can imagine how exhausted we are!!

Every time Hudson would wake up (either in the middle of the night or in the morning), he would be standing in his crib crying. There were many nights where we would try to soothe him back to sleep by just patting him and shushing him (without picking him up) and he would stand up and protest. He could go forever! So we always caved and picked him up. I just want to highlight how ingrained our habits are. These are the reasons that I wasn't hopeful for any type of sleep training - Hudson has more stamina that Ryan or I do! Also, I've never once seen him lay back down after he was standing up, so that wasn't promising.

Part of the reason that I never wanted to "sleep train" was because we try to practice Attachment Parenting. After reading the Dr. Sears Sleep Book, one of his mantras was "Beware of sleep trainers". So I was afraid of breaking the strong bond that we have with Hudson. Dr. Sear's approved of the "No Cry Sleep Solution", but after reading the book, it looked like that method required way too much committment on my part (because it has to do with the nursing piece) and I wouldn't be receiving much help from Ryan. I was too tired to take on this massive task by myself!

So, here's to our attempt at the Shuffle. I'll tag all of these posts with "sleep", so you should be able to follow our progress. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Just since I haven't posted anything lately, here are some pictures of my precious baby (who's ASLEEP!!! I still can't believe it!)

"Driving" at the park

Rockin' the Elmer Fudd look

Signing "all done"

Being a ham and giving Mommy "squishy face"