Sleep Training

Owen started to sleep longer stretches right on his 7 week birthday. It was smooth sailing with a few hiccups that I can count on one hand up until his 4 month birthday. We were SHOCKED at how well he adjusted to sleeping through the night. Well, his 4 month well-check came around and I found out he was only 13% in weight. Mind you, the pediatrician told me I had NOTHING to worry about, but I was so upset that our baby was only in the 13% in weight! I was determined to change that. So I started to give him a "dream feed" at 10:30. Basically waking him up before I went to bed to give him a feed. Unfortunately, Owen is NOT happy when he is woken up and it didn't always result in a good feeding. This feeding also started to give him trouble with staying dry in his normal diaper. And then it started…our baby that slept through the night…all of a sudden….STOPPED SLEEPING. Period. He woke up every 2 hours screaming and even hungrier than he was before I put him down. It was almost like the dream feed was making him even hungrier and he was trying to tell us he was NOT going to sleep through the night if I was going to offer this feeding at 10:30. Those 2-3 weeks were ROUGH. Tommy and I were at a loss of what to do and could NOT figure it out. We just assumed he was going through a growth spurt and had no clue how to really handle it. No rocking or soothing of any kind would make Owen go back to sleep! I also should mention that we still had Owen's crib in our room at this point - yes we are horrific parents in that respect. It was still cold and I didn't want to put him a drafty room and make his day care cold worse! I had a reason!! Anyways, needless to say, we were getting NO sleep with him crying in our bedroom. We were literally zombies for those weeks. Then my good friend Camilla (mother of Owen's girlfriend, Ella - a post dedicated to her is coming up!) told me she was sleep training her baby because she had been having trouble getting her to sleep through the night. I was shocked at how well it was working out for her, so I decided then and there I would sleep train Owen. I went home completely prepared to do this sleep training business and letting Owen CRY IT OUT. I had enough of not getting any sleep and dealing with him waking up every 2 hours. I started his bedtime routine with giving him a bath and then feeding him. Then I put him in his sleep sack, kissed him goodnight and said "If Ella can do it, so can you." Turns out, all it took was Owen to hear that Ella was being a good baby. He fell asleep that night without a peep. I was SHOCKED. I figured it was a fluke and he just had a long day and was extra tired, so we tried it the next night. Once again, he went down with NO PROBLEM!!! We joke that Ella told him to not cry because it sucked for her. Haha. We've been doing the sleep training for a few weeks now and we officially have a baby that sleeps 9-10.5 hour stretches. On good days, Owen will sleep until 6:30. The earliest he's gotten up since our "sleep training boot camp" is 5:00. Hooray!! Now I'm just waiting for the teething to start up and ruin all of it! :)