Cryin it out

Well, the time has come.  The time to cry it out.  Up until now, we’ve gone through a roller coaster of sleep.  At first, even though we were up at all hours, they were pretty easy to get back to sleep.  Then, even when they ‘woke up to the world’, they were still pretty good sleepers, and by 3 1/2 months they were sleeping 7pm to 7am with a dream feed at 11.  They would still wake up from time to time needing their pacifiers, but for the most part, they were ok.  Fast forward to today (five months). They are waking each other up, they need to be rocked to sleep, Will is now waking up from his naps after 30 minutes, they are waking up many, many times a night and are increasingly difficult to get back to sleep.   They are clearly overtired, because they’re waking up so often and getting ‘junk sleep’.  If one is asleep, the other is up. In short, it’s been very, very exhausting.  And finally, Aaron and I got to our wits end.  Enter: cry it out. Or “Ferberizing” for those of you who watch Modern Family.

The big question: to separate or not to separate.  Despite the fact that we have white noise in between their cribs, they do tend to wake each other up.  Not consistently, and it depends on where in the sleep cycle they are, but they do, so initially we were going to separate them for sleep training, and then put them back together.  Ultimately, however, since they will be sharing a room until they’re quite a bit older, we decided that we wanted them to get used to each other's crying in hopes they will learn to sleep through it. We read that it will take longer to train them, but I am inspired by other moms in my PEPs group who have been successful.

So we are here. February 8th, 2010 (pronounced twenty ten, btw).  We did their normal bedtime routine, albeit a bit earlier than usual (bath, bottle, book with dad, swaddle, put down).  With our monitoring station set-up (as seen below), we were ready to go.

Here is what ensued:

6:33 – both go down – both crying and slightly confused.

6:39 – I go in and let them know that we haven’t gone to Brazil and encourage them that they can, in fact, fall asleep on their own.

6:46 – Oliver stops crying.

6:52 – Will stops crying (is it too good to be true? Yes. Yes, it is.).

6:53 – 6:54 – Oliver cries, causing Will to cry.

6:53 – 7:04 – Will cries, causing Oliver to cry.

6:58 – 7:14 – Oliver is possessed by a demon. Will is whimpering while trying to lick the side of his bed (whatever works to soothe you, my dear).

7:14 – I go in and reassure them, causing Oliver’s demon to turn into The Devil (as in, the one and only, crème de la crème, Dark Angel, Oh Fallen One).  Will is still whimpering.  I then start crying. 

7:15 – 7:31 – Oliver screams, and just before I’m about to go in again, he finds, and is mesmerized by, the green light on the camera at the end of his crib causing him to look directly into it.  He proceeds to stare into my soul.

7:22 – 7:37 – Will openly received the demon that was in Oliver and SCREAMS bloody murder.  He’s doing the ugly cry now (I feel bad that he’s swaddled and can’t hide his face in his hands – no one wants witnesses for the ugly cry).  This causes Oliver to start crying again.

We are officially an hour in.

7:37 – I sneak in to Will’s crib to reassure him that we are still here and he WILL get through this (he didn’t think it was funny). 

7:38 – 7:42 – Will cries while trying to find the place that he was licking before.

7:43 – 7:45 – Will cries more, causing Oliver to look over at him in disgust. Oliver then goes back to shaking his head back and forth trying to find a comfortable position.

I find a corner and start rocking back and forth. 

7:47 – 7:49 – Will cries AGAIN!! Oliver looks SUPER annoyed.  Then goes back to shaking his head. 

7:51 – Will is finally asleep.

7:58 – With Will asleep, Oliver is finally able to fall asleep and stop staring at us.

One hour and 28 minutes for the beginning of night one, and every minute was purdy darn bad. On a brighter note, I was able to successfully give them their dream feed (and change Oliver’s diaper – he’s a big pee-er) and get them back to bed with no waking, so we shall see what the night wakings bring. I hope not another hour and a half of crying.  All the books say that they will be happy to see us in the morning, but I’m kind of doubtful.  Oliver is shaping up to be as stubborn as me, which might not bode well in the grudge department. We shall see.  And tomorrow we get to also start training their naps too.  This week is tops.