Silas Sleep Bulletin

I've spared you some of the gory details, but after being on a wild sleep roller coaster with Silas over the past 6 months, we finally knuckled down and "sleep trained" little Silas. If you've been glancing at "Silas Wake-Ups" box you might have noticed a recent string of un-interrupted nights of sleep. After we got past possibly the very worst night of my life, Silas has just slept well.

His night wakings were increasing in frequency and duration and he was proving averse to going back to sleep. It was like dealing with a drug-resistant strain of baby sleep virus. We knew that after the New Year we were going to work on sleep training but had purposefully put it off until we were back home from our New Year's trip to Michigan. While in Michigan we were all sleeping in one room and we were away from home which were not ideal conditions under which to begin the process.

Unfortunately it was also really hard for anyone to get to sleep if Silas was getting up 4-5 times a night and not going back to sleep. So, start the training we did. The first night wasn't too bad-- i think he cried off and on for about 45 minutes and then slept through the rest of the night. The second night however, was potentially the worst night truly of my life.* He cried off and on for 3 hours (until 2 in the morning) at which point i finally picked him up and held him and got him to calm down enough to go to sleep.

Henry's worst night clocked in at 1 hour 40 minutes, but he was all scream from the first second you laid him down. Silas is more fuss, whine, cry a little, quiet down and just sound mad (ba, ba, ba, ba) then start fussing and crying so more, a little screaming, quiet down, repeat. It's like because he's more mild-mannered he has more energy to extend his stubbornness. So, i figured that this sleep training was actually going to be worse with Silas than it was with Henry.

But thankfully we made it through the horrible night and since then it's been almost all smooth sailing. Last weekend he woke up both nights for about 10-20 minutes and then went back to sleep on his own. All this sleeping has us thinking that before too much longer Silas will be moving downstairs into the room with Henry. The only thing holding me back is that Silas still nurses in the morning and it's a lot easier to take care of that upstairs than downstairs will Henry will then be guaranteed to wake up shouting "i want to help you make coffee!"

*i'm thinking the only other contender would be the time JT and i got lost in the woods at night trying to re-find our tent (without a source of light). After JT almost stumbled off a cliff we decided to lay down and sleep right there on the ground. It was fall in the Shenandoah so we had on light cotton sweaters and shorts, which even with the newspapers we were using as a blanket, was still the coldest, most horrible night i've ever had. I guess at least with sleep training i was warm.