Sunday, April 29, 2012

Time to Train

Clark has been sleeping in our bed throughout the night ever since he got chicken pox. Sick babies need their mommies and mommies need to cuddle their sick babies. But then I never went back to putting him in his bassinet. He just stayed in bed with us.

Ugh. I know better. He's my second biological baby, after all. How did I let this happen?

The thing is that when they're really little and you know they're going to wake up anyway, it's just SO easy to pop a boob in their mouth and let everyone fall back to sleep quickly. You have to get up every few hours no matter what, so might as well make the duration of the times awake as short as possible, right? But now Clark is old enough that he can sleep though the night, and I need to get him on that path. He's used to waking up every few hours and getting a boob shoved in his face, which gives him comfort and lets him fall back asleep. He doesn't eat a full meal, he just nurses for a few seconds and drifts back off again. It's a habit, not a necessity. And I need to break him of that habit. I want to sleep for longer than two hours uninterrupted. It's time.

We've been working on sleep training for the past few nights. Tonight will be the fourth night, I think. So far the rules are that Clark has to stay in his bassinet for at least one hour, whether he's sleeping or crying, starting from the time we go to bed AND no nursing from midnight until 2 am. Clark actually slept in his bassinet for about 2 1/2 hours last night. Woohoo! Hopefully that was not just a fluke but a new standard. We'll see how tonight goes.

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