Baby Sleep Diary – Days 2 and 3

(not my baby, but a cute pic I found)

Last night was our third evening using the methods from Dr. Ferber’s book, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems.  Things are still going well, although I really messed things up yesterday.  I did not sleep well night before last (I think my body is still on Joey’s former sleep schedule) and instead up getting up with Joey early yesterday morning, I opted to lay him in bed with us to get another hour of sleep.  Instead, he slept another 2 hours! Ooopps!  So in an effort to not completely mess up our schedule, I only allowed him one nap yesterday.  He was exhausted and nodding off by 7!  So I did my best to keep him awake til 8, then did our bedtime routine.  He ended up asleep by 9.  That could have meant a very early morning for us, but I managed to get him to sleep until 9.  That means he can go back to 2 short naps today and probably will go to sleep at 11:30 instead of 10:30, then we will be back on track tomorrow.
That said, things are still going well, though I think he will continue to wake a few times a night to eat until the end of the week-long process, when he will only be allowed to have 2 oz every 5 hours.  From there I am going to slowly lessen the amount, then replace it with water in hopes that he will stop waking to eat.  The time between night waking/feedings is getting longer with each night, so I think we are still on track.  He is also still having no problems at naptimes, laying right down and going to sleep and not waking until he is finished.
Another really good thing about this process is that since I am charting his sleep/wake patterns, I am getting a really good idea of what his natural schedule is. This means that very soon I will actually be able to put him on a workable routine!  I have tried to do this several times since he was around 5 months old and it never worked.  Now I realize that was because his schedule relied on my putting him to sleep at night and for naps.  Now he is not reliant upon me to sleep. 
I will continue to keep you updated!  Look for another post soon about my adventures with changing to cloth diapers a couple of weeks ago!

Blessings,

Cassie