Why isn't my baby sleeping?

sleepy Mommy and sleeping Monkey

Remember the first days home from the hospital when every picture you took of your newborn was of them sleeping like an angel? Monkey was the same way. That first week she slept around the clock.

Then…she woke up.

The first few months, monkey refused to sleep unless someone was holding her. When we finally got her to sleep in the cradle in our room, she developed severe acid reflux. She couldn’t sleep on her tummy because of the risk of SIDS, and she couldn’t sleep on her back because she would spit up in her sleep and start to choke. Our absolutely wonderful pediatrician (We’ll call her Dr. Wonderful) told us she needed to be held upright at least at a 45 degree angle when sleeping, and we couldn’t find anything that would safely hold her that way. So…she was sleeping on us again. Needless to say we weren’t getting any sleep. We would take shifts with her. I would stay up until 2am with her and then Daddy would take over until he had to go to work at 7am. We were like two sleep-deprived ships passing in the night.

We were able to start Monkey on rice cereal at 4 months and soon after that her reflux subsided and she was able to sleep through the night. Every night. We felt so spoiled! Lots of sleep and much happier parents.

But it didn’t last…

Monkey’s teeth started coming in around 5 months and teething made sleep very difficult. She was waking up every few hours needing to be held and comforted. We thought she was way too young to just let her cry it out and we couldn’t bear to hear her cry, thinking that she was in pain. Besides, she was teething and she needed us right? Little did we know that once the teeth break the surface of the gum, they are not considered teething anymore. At Monkey’s 6 month checkup, Dr. Wonderful told us it was time to let her “cry it out.” We looked at each other and we knew she was right but were afraid of what was to come.

There are actually many different ways to approach the “cry it out” method. We couldn’t bring ourselves to just let her cry all night, so we would say gooodnight and then come in at increasing intervals (5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20, and so on), each time patting her back and saying goodnight, but not picking her up!

Honestly, it only took 3 nights. The first night was maybe a half hour of crying, the next night was an hour or so, and the third was only about 10 minutes. It has been three months and I can blissfully say that she sleeps about 12 hours a night…yes, 12 hours EVERY night. We still have our rough nights, whether it be a new tooth or a cold, but consistency is key. We DO NOT pick her up. (Okay, if she poops we pick her up…but she goes right back in after a change) And she knows we do not pick her up. So she does not cry. And we sleep.