Sleep Training Day 1

As I've mentioned on my blog several times before, one of my closest friends, Emily, introduced me to the book BabyWise while I was pregnant with Riley. We used the training methods from the book with Riley and she started sleeping through the night by two months. SO, I'm eager to try it out with Braylen!

For the first 10 days, we have worked on taking full feedings every 2-3 hours or so. He seems to have gotten into about a 3 hour routine at this point so that's where we are starting. This is key to sleep training success...no snacking!

We started today with the basics of sleep training -

1. Chose a starting time in the morning - 7:00 am (this will be what we work toward)
Chose a bed time in the evening - 8:00pm

With Riley in the beginning, we waited until 10 to put her to bed. However, since 8:00 is the time Riley goes to bed now and because neither of us want to stay up until 10, we decided to just set Braylen's bed time for 8:00. We both decided we would rather get up early if we have to instead of staying up late.

2. After every feeding today, which is every 3 hours or so, I worked on keeping Braylen awake for at least 30 to 45 minutes. Then, I put him in his crib while he was still awake and let him fall asleep on his own. He has done pretty well with it so far! If he cried, I would go in and give him his paci or readjust him, but I didn't pick him up.  (So schedule looks like this:  7:00-7:30 eat, stay awake until 8 or 8:15, sleep until 10, start over until bedtime at 8:00 which we feed at 8 and immediately put to bed)

3. Tonight, we start our bedtime routine that we will do every single evening. This is what I believe truly worked wonders with Riley. After just a few days, she was able to recognize when it was bedtime just by the routine. Braylen's bedtime routine will be diaper change, pajamas on, bottle, swaddle, put in bed, sound machine on, lights out.


This will take time, but wish us luck that we will have a "sleep through the nighter" soon!!