Sleepy Time

I just have to post about this cuz I am so excited. Jason has always been a great sleeper. He started sleeping through the night the night of his 3 month birthday. He would go to sleep on his own in his bed. I'd just lay him down when he was sleepy and he'd do the rest.

Then I guess I trained him to need me to go to sleep. At first it was because he would fall asleep while I was nursing him. Then when I stopped nursing he would fall asleep while eating his bottle. I didn't worry about it when it happened because he was such a good sleeper and I enjoyed the rocking time I had with him. It happened so slowly so I hardly noticed but I finally realized that there was hardly a night that he slept all the way through anymore. He wouldn't need much usually, just putting binky in his mouth. Sometimes if he was really awake we would have to sit and rock... and rock, and rock him. I decided that it was time I did something about it.

I decided that I needed to teach him how to go to sleep on his own again. I was so dissapointed because he knew how to once and now I'd taught him not to. I felt like we were going backwards instead of forward...

So last Sunday I laid him down, sleepy but not asleep. He cried for about 20 minutes and then finally fell asleep. It was hard for me, because I knew that if I'd rocked him he would have been asleep in 2 minutes, but instead he just cried for 20 minutes. So the next night he cried for 35 minutes! The hardest part was that he would start crying even before I left the room. It was like he knew I was going to abandon him so he'd start crying. On Tuesday he only cried for 15 minutes. But Wednesday night was probably the worst. I had to go in because he was on the vurge of hysterical. But he did eventually go to sleep on his own. It was so hard because he used to do it! And I'd taught him not to.

Well on Thursday he fell asleep in about 5 minutes. (Which was a blessing because Bryce was really sick and I was "up with him" that night.) Anyway this is ending up being a lot longer than I was planning, but the exciting news is that I laid him down tonight; he was really tired but not too "sleepy" yet. I left the room and... NO CRYING. I peaked in a bit later and he was FAST ASLEEP! I know it won't be this easy every night, but I am not going to slip back into the habit of rocking him to sleep. And I don't know if it's just been a good week, but he has hasn't woke in the middle of the night either. It's so amazing how I feel so much more rested I feel when my sleep isn't interrupted, even for a few seconds.