time for sleep.

Baby stopped sleeping through the night, some time in early to mid November.
I think it was likely when she got sick. She would wake up, we'd say "oh, she's sick" and go trot into her room without waiting to see if she'd go back to sleep.
In our defense, she WAS pretty sick.
Then a long weekend in Atlanta @ family's house, she wakes up, we jump to quiet her so as not to disturb the 13 other people sleeping elsewhere in the house...

and viola, it's 6 weeks later, we've not gotten a good night's sleep, and life's not quite what it should be.

The wife decided a few days ago that she just plain refused to let the baby cry herself back to sleep, which was a bit of a blow.


Cut to last night.

We're lying in bed, after dusting off two different books on infant sleeping that we had purchased a little over a year ago, looking for advice /tips on trying to fix the problem.

The books serve no practical purpose, save for getting us to laugh.
They'd probably also work as a coaster....

The most ridiculous was from the No Cry Sleep Solution. It was a.....nine stage process, I think. Each stage geared toward moving your kid just a liiiiiiiiiiitttttllllleeee bit closer to putting themselves back to sleep unaided.

Nine stages, each additional stage to be obtained VERY gradually.

stage one - do what you're doing now, but for not quite as long. put kid to bed drowsy. if kid reacts poorly, pick her up, and keep doing what you're doing, until you can get her to NOT react poorly when you put her in the crib.

Stage two, shorten it up even more, put kid to bed....pick her up... blah blah etc.

Stage three......

you get the idea.

Stage nine has you standing juuuuuuuuuuuust outside her door, using only verbals to talk her into going back to sleep.

the shear silliness of this cracked us up.

"I think stage 10 would be standing a little further away from the doorway.... stage 11 would be talking her to sleep from the vicinity of the kitchen sink......"
"stage 17 would be from the doorway leading out of the dining room into the hallway"
"stage 21 would be just rolling over in bed, and yelling at her to shut the hell up and go back to sleep. but she won't hear us because she'll be off at college at this point......"

Ironically, we started the sleep training nonsense a year ago today. bought a couple different books before christmas, read up on different ways to get her to sleep in her crib, because she and my wife were not co-sleeping successfully. The books were ridiculous a year ago.
Made us laugh then, too.

The most ridiculous one at THAT time also came from the No Cry Sleep Solution.
Put the baby in the crib, but right next to your bed. gradually move the crib a few inches further from your bed, over time, until it was a few feet away.
By the time it was down the freakin' hall and into the baby's room, she will have been out of it for like...12 years.
"Dad, can I borrow the car, I need to go study at Jennifer's"
"not until you push your crib out of the kitchen and into your room. It's really in the way...."

Anyhow, after shaking our heads at the methods we read a year ago, we decided to just chuck her in the crib and let her cry it out, sleep-training old-school.
And it worked, fairly well, though it was not easy. She gradually started putting herself back to sleep, and doing so quicker and quicker, until we'd get a couple nights a week at least of no waking at all.

Cut again to last night. we gave up on the books, had a good laugh, and went to sleep.

She woke us up at 11:30, I guess, cus I didn't look at the clock. I just know that Wendy had gotten up, and that she woke me at 12:45 to take the baby, cuz she'd been up for over an hour...
I had her asleep 20 minutes later, and got back in bed.

"You win" my wife said.
"I tried one of those suggestions we read tonite, she farted all over it. We can let her cry it out."

A couple hours later, she woke up again, and started her usual hollering. We fell back asleep.
awhile later, we woke up, and there was complete quiet coming from the baby's room.
yes!

So, we'll see what happens next, and how long it will take until we get a full night's sleep again.

Gotta have this sh*t fixed, before she gets old enough to sleep in a regular bed. we really don't want her to be knocking on our door 3 times a night....