Hello there! I’m Becky (aka MrsH) from Rockin’ H Reviews, and I am thrilled and thankful that Emily is letting me guest blog here on Nap Time is My Time!
I am a SAHM from Texas who loves cloth diapering, breastfeeding, and making strides toward more natural and frugal living. My high school sweetheart and husband of five years, Mr. H, is a high school theatre teacher. Our son, Sweet T, was born at home in March of 2011 and has a HUGE personality. I love getting to know him more each day!
Rockin’ H Reviews started in August 2011 as a place to keep family and friends updated on stories about and pictures of Sweet T. Since then I’ve branched out a little to include recipes, diy kid’s activities, and even a review and giveaway a while back (with another coming up in August).
Sleep Training FAIL
As thrilled as I was to get the chance to guest blog, I have to admit that I’ve nervously written and rewritten my guest post quite a few times. I knew I wanted to talk about our family’s recent experience with sleep training, but everything I wrote spilled out sounding bland and pretentious. I try to find the positive and fun parts of parenting, so it was important to me that this post conveys that instead of just seeming gloomy and regretful. Though sleep training was an intense and significant experience (mainly because it went so far awry) it’s laughable to me now that we even tried it. Then again, what won’t you try when you haven’t had a solid night’s sleep in sixteen months, you’re dealing with blisters and niplash due to an aggressive nurser, and your husband is literally kicked out of the bed each night by your toddler? So, here it is, the Rockin’ H family’s attempt at sleep training…..
I’ve never been on board with the idea of sleep training, so I think Mr. H may have thought I was out of my head from sleep deprivation when I suggested that we give it a try. Really, it was desperation talking. All the reasons I mentioned before were kind of driving me out of my gourd. It’s funny how you can tolerate things for months on end and then all of a sudden snap and know that something has to change. That’s where we were at.
So, in a quest to “change something” we began the gentlest transition into sleep training I could think of. We put a futon mattress on the floor next to Sweet T’s crib, and that’s where we slept for a week. I figured that if we were still near him, Sweet T would be comforted by our presence alone and not need any more than a little rocking, a prolonged pat on the back and a gentle, reassuring voice to get him to sleep. Why would I think that? Well, because that’s what the self-proclaimed sleep training gurus on the web said would work, of course!
And just like those websites promised, it worked like a charm! Those first few nights were bliss; the only solid sleep I’ve gotten overnight since Sweet T has been born. I laughed at my own resistance to begin sleep training, and wondered why it had taken me so long to consider. I marveled at how all our worries were over. We would have our bed back to ourselves and I could stay up watching Drop Dead Diva and blogging all night, interruption free.
But around the fourth night, reality reared its ugly head. All of a sudden our boisterous son turned into a sullen mess that clung to us all day and had to be nursed constantly during waking hours. Nothing made him happy, and his favorite thing was to bang his head on our cement floors (or any other hard/dangerous surface) repeatedly. I’d heard that head banging was a natural way for toddlers to cope with frustration due to limited communication skills, and it was obvious that Sweet T was going through something rough that he couldn’t communicate, but I wrote his crankiness off as part of the newfound toddlerhood that he was experiencing.
As in tune as we generally are to his changes in behavior, it took us a while to connect that the problems Sweet T was having were all tied to the sleep training. I connected the dots during a “how to raise your kid right” talk with the in-laws. I can’t remember what they were saying (oops!), but all of a sudden it clicked that everything was off because of the changes we had implemented.
In light of the drastic behavior change, we decided to go back to normal in our household and forget the sleep training. And, miracle of miracles, we got our happy-go-lucky little monster back almost immediately. I have some regrets about the fact that we tried sleep training, but I know that every parent needs a break sometimes (if only to provide them with more clarity and insight to handle their situation) and that I resent waking up eight times a night a lot less after having gone through all this.
I also know that Sweet T will get to sleeping through the night on his own schedule, not ours. Between the teething, vivid dreaming, growth spurts, and learning a myriad of new skills daily, being a toddler is rough enough without having your routine in upheaval or your source of comfort taken away. And though what we had been going through was rough, once we got back to nursing at night for about a week, Sweet T started eating more solids and needing less daytime nursing.
Yes, I do still have a husband who slips out of bed to sleep on the couch at around four each morning because he’s sick of being kicked repeatedly, and abundant interruptions in my “me time” throughout the night when Sweet T wakes up needing to nurse. But I also have a son who is happy and comfortable enough with our relationship that he knows I’ll always be here for him when he needs me. Even if it is three in the morning when I’d rather be sleeping blogging.
I need to figure out something to do with my daughter. She’s 5 months old now and will only sleep in her own bed for about 4 hours at a time. Once she wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse, she won’t let me put her back down. 🙁
I try to just go by my daughter’s cues… She’ll want her own bed eventually!
Because every child is different, it’s hard to come up with a tried and true method to help our children sleep. For my family it’s just worked out best to stick with what’s comfortable and eventually they learn. I’m currently trying to wean my daughter from nursing to sleep and with litle tears, lots of cuddles, and a bit of back patting and rocking I think we’re succeeding! Next… night nursing… we’ll see!