WELL, it has been a continuous battle BUT we had some success! Last night we put our exhausted Mercedes down to bed at ten after six. She began to cry, and cry, and cry. I'm telling you I never was one who wanted to use the "cry it out" method. It always seemed mean to me. I HATE hearing my baby cry. It kills me and half the time I begin to cry too!
After weeks and weeks of getting bad sleep Taylor and I have become exhausted and Mercedes has become so too. No matter how hard we would try to rock her or bounce her to sleep she would fight it. Basically things were getting extremely difficult and with her strong-willed personality she was determined to stay awake. Taylor and I have been going back and forth on what to do but we finally decided to stick with this and see if letting her cry more would produce better results. The fact was, even when we rocked her or bounced her to sleep she still wasn't sleeping good, she was getting sleep deprived and so were we.
Last night we let her cry like I said. It was TORTURE but Taylor and I both felt this is what we needed to do because she wasn't going to sleep otherwise. We decided that at an hour we would go in and comfort her. At exactly an hour there was no more crying and she was sound asleep. We were so relieved! Then the real surprise came when I awoke the next morning and realized... We slept through the night. We ALL slept through the night!!!!!! This was the first time in months!!! Mercedes didn't make a peep until she woke up at almost 7:00 a.m. She slept for just short of 12 hours. And I don't think she has EVER done that in her life. I am so happy to say that we had some sleep success, and I know that it's probably not going to be perfect from here on out but we had a good night and we all slept great!
4 comments:
Wahoo! That is seriously so amazing. We have yet to have that break through. I felt like we had a break through the other night when Preston fell asleep after crying for only 5 minutes. Unfortunately, he still woke up 2 times. Last night he woke up 3 times. It's killing me. Hopefully as we stick to our guns and get him going to sleep on his own he will eventually sleep through the night.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! I could copy your story - swap out the names - and it'd be exactly what happened with us and Brady!!
And obviously there's no such thing as perfection in this life, but DO expect and believe that that wonderfully peaceful night you all had can happen every night!
We each sleep all through the night almost every single night and it is DIVINE.
Now, I don't know how she naps, but if she's still waking up too early, do the cry it out for that, too! Brady LOVES taking his daily nap (he's down to one, now) and sleeps 2 1/2 to 3 hours (sometimes almost 4 hours!) every day. All because I firmed up and let him cry. I'm not joking when I say he loves going down for his nap! He basically asks for it around noon everyday and goes down gladly, haha. So it has majorly paid off for everyone!!!!
Great job though!!! I'm so proud of you!
All I can say is you guys are rocks! Amazing! She'll thank you for helping her learn to sleep--maybe for the rest of her life!
That is exciting!! I dislike hearing babies cry...I just want to hold them and love them. I am sure it was complete torture for you. But, yeah for 12 hours of sleep!!
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