Forget all the solicited (and unsolicited) advice your friends have given you about “how to get your baby to sleep through the night”. I hate to do it, I hate that I am THAT PERSON right now, but because babies are all so different, the best and most successful way to get sleep is to have a plan built just for them (and you).
You see, we never sleep trained Sofia as it was just not an option at that very moment. When Sofia was born she was deemed colic, and we were simply trying to keep our head above water on a day-to-day basis. We were not in the right frame of mind to tackle sleep training on-top of dealing with all that comes with a colic’y baby.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT… now having successfully sleep trained Stella, I have no doubt we could’ve powered through with the support and help from our family and a good sleep training consultant like Janey at WeeSleep.
WEESLEEP
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For those of you considering sleep training, STOP! Stop thinking about it and do it, it will be the best thing you did for baby and for you, and something that’s good for the whole family is not something you need to waver on. #amiright
It didn’t actually hit me until Sammy and I were praising 2-hour sleep intervals over breakfast one morning when it donned on me… our minds were beginning to slip. No person, baby or adult could be doing any good on only 120-minutes of consecutive sleep each night. Just as we struggled to function, so was Stella. The extra tears, the clingy’iness, the overall whiny frustration began to all make sense… SHE WAS EXHAUSTED (and begging for caffeine), just like us!
This is when we started to think about sleep training. We wanted to find a company out there that could promise success (because nobody wants to work hard to be disappointed), backed up with amazing support (we knew we would need it) and took an approach we were comfortable with (listening to a baby cry is not something we enjoy or are comfortable with). I found a few companies that would work but essentially narrowed things down to WeeSleep after they “ticked” all our boxes that we were looking for. She was lovely to chat with, listening to all our concerns and putting them to rest with answers, got a feel for us as a family, our lifestyle and of course Stella as a baby and that’s when she started to build a routine for us.
…in 10 days you’re going to be sleeping through the night, all of you!
Night 1 was TERRIFYING, I’m not going to lie (why start now right?). I was worried about all things that may go wrong, the tension that would grow between Sammy and I while we tackled this together at all hours of the night, Sofia having a horrible sleep because of it… all of these things were keeping me from eating most of the day leading up to the first night of sleep training. GUESS WHAT?! None of this happened and clearly I had starved myself for nothing (made up for it in cupcakes the next day). The only tears shed on night 1 were my own (we all know I suck at emotions right?). I was so shocked to see her put herself to sleep so quickly (4 minutes; from putting her in her bed awake to falling fast asleep), I was sad that I never gave her the benefit of the doubt before, We were so quick to jump to her crib we never let her try to put herself to sleep again and I was just a ball of mess in thinking about all the sleep I had stolen from her having not having done this sooner.
Night 1 was off to a good but emotional start… things got progressively better each day leading up to day 5… and then they got worse on day 6 and 7… and then back to better on day 8 and amazing on days 9 and 10! Now, present day, we’re sleeping from 6pm to 6am (and when then stars align 7am!).
YOU GUYS?! We can function again! I can love with my whole heart, walk in a straight line and speak without any sort of mumbling. Oh sleep, you’re such a beautiful thing!
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Disclosure: This post is sponsored by WeeSleep, but as always the opinions made are my own.
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