We tried giving him extra milk before bed, thinking that maybe he was hungry. Nope, didn't make a difference. I tried letting him cry for a few minutes, like 10 or so, but I couldn't stand to listen to him cry, so in I would go to rescue him, but deep down I knew that something had to be done.
At Logan's 1 year check up we discussed this with the doctor and she basically said what I already knew. I just had to let him cry. She explained that there was no reason for him waking, besides we had trained him to do it. Who wouldn't want to come snuggle in their parent's bed and get as much warm milk as they wanted? So, then I felt so horrible and guilty. I knew I was part, if not the entire, reason Logan was waking so much, which lead to him getting such poor sleep. I spoke to several people, read a few books and articles, and finally decided that we would go with the Ferber Method of crying it out. I luckily had a lot of encouragement and support from friends and family to help me get through the first few nights.
So, last Friday we put Logan to bed and prayed for the best. I won't bore you with every awful detail or tear that I cried, or the horrible detail that I turned the monitor down, but let's just say that those first two nights were pretty rough. I did go in and check on him in timed intervals, just to quickly pat his back and tell him it was okay. I hate to say it, but there was a total of a few hours of crying the first night, a little less the second night, and by the third night he slept straight through from 7:30 - 5:00am. At 5am I went in and gave him his paci, rubbed his back and like magic, he laid himself back down and was out!
Every night has been golden since then. He has still woken up at 5 the past few mornings, but with a quick hug from Mommy, he lays right back down and sleeps until around 7am. I have to say, I am more than glad that we did it. It was terrible and hurt like hell, but being able to sleep until 5 again is so great! I know this may sound silly, but it is almost like childbirth. You know it hurt like heck, but somehow when you look back, it doesn't seem so bad and you know it was absolutely worth every second.
Chris was home with Logan on Monday morning when I went to work and I was really worried that Logan would be upset and quite possibly in a bad mood, since he had lost so much sleep over the weekend. This is the picture that I got from Chris as I was trying to keep my mind on work, but only able to think about how bad I wanted to be home comforting my baby. Obviously he was FINE! Daddy let him come have some snuggle time in our bed and they watched a little Mickey Mouse Clubhouse together before starting their day!
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