Ferber- Night One

Night one of Ferber is currently underway. We had to modify her bedtime routine somewhat, which made me nervous, but it went okay. Every other night she gets a bath, and after that we do lotion, massage, jammies, bottle, and bed. If it's not bath night, we go straight to the lotion and continue from there. She always falls asleep for the night drinking her bottle, and since the whole point of Ferber is to eliminate sleep associations and teach her to fall asleep on her own, we couldn't let her do that tonight. She got a bath yesterday, so tonight we decided to do the bottle first, then lotion and jammies. She actually didn't fall asleep drinking her bottle tonight, although she was definitely sleepy. She got pretty energetic when I changed her diaper and put her pajamas on, so I wasn't too sure she'd be able to settle down on her own. After we got her ready for bed, we gave her some snuggles and put her down.

Here's the timeline for night one:

-7:30: We gave her hugs and kisses, said goodnight, laid her down and left the room.

-7:40: She started to fuss and we set the timer for 3 minutes.

-7:43: We went in the room. She started smiling as soon as she saw us. I rolled her to her tummy, patted her back for a minute, and left again.

-7:45: More fussing. Set timer for 5 minutes.

-7:50: Went in again. Again she started smiling. I patted her back and left again. More fussing.

-7:52: Set timer for 7 minutes. Fussing turned into crying.

-7:59: We went in again. She continued to cry this time, even after she saw us. I patted her back and rubbed her head, and then we left again. She was still crying when we left the room.

-8:01: Set timer for 10 minutes.

-8:04: Crying stopped. She fell asleep!



Our plan for tonight is that I will take the 10-2 shift, and Matt will take the 2-6 shift if she wakes up. This way we will each get at least some sleep tonight. Ferber has a lot of information on eliminating night feedings, but we're just not comfortable doing that. Elliot has always been below the 20th percentile for weight, and my feeling is that if she wants to eat, I will feed her. She does actually drink her bottles at night, so I'm going to keep it up. If she only took an ounce or so, I would think she was just using them to pacify herself, but I'm pretty sure she's actually hungry, so we will continue to feed her on demand.

I think the most difficult part of this process will be getting her to go back down after her night feedings. At bedtime she has always fallen asleep while drinking her bottle, and went down without a problem. At night however, she wakes up during her bottle and will lay awake in our arms for up to an hour. This is the main reason we are doing Ferber. If she would go back down easily after a feeding, we wouldn't have a problem. I have no problem getting up to feed her, but she's becoming increasingly difficult to get back down, and I want her to learn how to put herself to sleep now, since I'm told it only gets harder once babies can pull themselves up and throw things out of their cribs.

All in all, round one went far better than I expected. We were very sad to start Ferber, as it meant the end of rocking our sweet little girl to sleep. We both love holding our little sleeping baby, so we were very emotional about that ending. We actually weren't nervous about the crying at all. We knew she would cry, of course, but we were both certain that it was time for this. There have been a few occasions where she has woken up as we laid her down. If we just leave her, she will sometimes go back to sleep on her own, and when she does that she sleeps great. This really makes us feel that this is the right thing to do for her. As Ferber says, your child might cry if you won't let them play in the street. You wouldn't like hearing them cry, but you probably also wouldn't feel guilty about not giving in to them. We feel the same way about this. I don't enjoy hearing her cry, but I know that this is going to benefit her in the long run, so I'm okay with it. She is an exceptionally quiet crier though, so I'm sure it would be harder if she was really sobbing. I am going to pump and go to bed now, and I will update when she next wakes up.

Update:

-2:55: She woke up. Matt went in and gave her a bottle.

-3:06: She finished her bottle. He gave her a kiss, said goodnight, and laid her down. She started to cry. He set the timer for 3 minutes.

-3:07: Asleep.

-6:45: Woke up for the day.