Ferber

Sleep training. It's a controversial topic. There are a lot of methods out there that seem to work based on your kid's personality and your personal parenting style. I've learned through reading and talking with other parents that no ONE method is the right fit for everyone. There's the pick-up, put-down, the cry-it-out, the child led sleep training, Ferber/controlled crying, no-cry/no-tears method (or attachment parenting), gradual retreat and so on. After talking with my sister, she and a lot of her parenting friends chose the Ferber method. Her sister-in-law actually tried all of them and said that Ferber was the only one that worked. SO, with that, I decided to start there.

I know most of you may not care to know ALL of this information. But, I'm posting for my future benefit as well as all of my Mama friends out there. Take this with a grain of salt. Everyone is different :)

Ferber, or controlled crying, is a form of sleep training where you allow your baby to cry for short, specific periods of time before going in to offer comfort. They typically suggest for babies to be 6 months or older for this method to be successful. The founder created a rigid 7-day schedule all based on the psychological theory of extinction of behavior. Basically, it teaches the baby that crying won't get them what they need. They have to figure out a way to soothe themselves if they happen to wake up at night. The difference between Ferber and Cry-it-out is Ferber allows "checks" based on this scheduled wait time. This allows the parents to emotionally connect and comfort their baby without aiding in them going back to sleep. They know you are there, but they don't NEED you to fall back to sleep. That's the goal. The biggest rule? Don't pick him up. Whatever you do, don't pick him up.

The schedule:
Day 1: 1st wait period-3 , 2nd wait period-5, 3rd wait period-10, remaining wait periods-10
Day 2: 1st wait period-5 , 2nd wait period-10, 3rd wait period-12, remaining wait periods-12
Day 3: 1st wait period-10 , 2nd wait period-12, 3rd wait period-15, remaining wait periods-15
Day 4: 1st wait period-12 , 2nd wait period-15, 3rd wait period-17, remaining wait periods-17
Day 5: 1st wait period-15 , 2nd wait period-17, 3rd wait period-20, remaining wait periods-20
Day 6: 1st wait period-17 , 2nd wait period-20, 3rd wait period-25, remaining wait periods-25
Day 7: 1st wait period-20 , 2nd wait period-25, 3rd wait period-30, remaining wait periods-30

So, how'd this work for me? Well, I'll preface this by saying I dropped everything. I didn't want to have to train again, so we dropped the swaddle, binky and nighttime feeds all at once. Brutal, I know. But we felt it was the best way for Miles to learn without getting confused.

The first night? TERRIBLE. We did our typical bedtime routine, put him in the crib, said night night and walked out. He's always been pretty good at falling asleep at first by himself. So, he squirmed for a bit but fell asleep pretty easily. Come 3:30am, that's a different story. He woke up crying so I started my wait/check times. 3 HOURS LATER, he finally fell asleep. It was awful to hear him crying and knowing I couldn't go in and snuggle/rock him to sleep. It was also hard emotionally because after each check, he cried even harder when I left. I'm thinking to myself, "What the heck am I doing? My baby is sad! Is this even working. AH!" All while Googling, "how long does a baby cry when Ferbering." But, if I broke down in the middle, I realized that I would have let him cry all that time for nothing. So I had to stay strong. There has to been an end goal. That end goal for me is making sure he is able to sleep, wake up and go back to sleep again all on his own.

The second night was great! He slept through no problem. He was doing this every once in awhile before we started, so I'm thinking this may have been a fluke. Not related to the sleep training.

The third night he woke up a couple times so I did 2 checks. He only cried for a little bit in between which was good!

The fourth and fifth nights we were down to just one check. He seemed to understand that I was there and took comfort in me coming in. But, as the days went on, he didn't need me as much. So, after the fifth night, we let him go. And guess what? He's been doing great! It's been a month since we started and he rarely cries when he wakes up. He typically talks, moves around and finds a better spot to go  back to sleep. That's not to say we don't have some bad nights. We do. They're just not as often.

Since then, we've put together a schedule which he's thriving on. Now that he has consistent naps and bedtime, it makes things so much easier during the day. Our current schedule:
8ish            Awake
9:00            Breakfast Bottle
9:30ish       Breakfast Snack
10/10:30     Morning Nap (1.5-2 hours)
12/12:30     Lunch Bottle
1/1:30         Lunch Solids
2/2:30        Afternoon Nap (2 hours)
4:30/5        Afternoon Bottle
6ish           Happy hour snack
7/7:15        Evening Bottle & bedtime routine
7:45/8        Bed/Asleep

So, all in all, Feber working amazingly for us. He's doing great and seems to even like bedtime more than ever. When all I want to do is snuggle and read a book at bedtime, he's sliding his legs off my lap and just not having it. I put him in the crib, say night night and he smiles a HUGE smile like he's saying, "Thank you mama. Goodnight". He talks for a bit and is out within 10 minutes. That's the norm these days.

And because a post is not complete without photos of the little nugget, here's a series titled "Miles' Sleeping Acrobatics" for your viewing pleasure. We got a camera in his room before we started Ferber so we could see if he was okay without going in his room. It's proven to be quite entertaining.

Where's Miles? lol