It’s officially Day 5 of the new bedtime routine, and there was only 20 minutes of crying! In fact, Graem is asleep right now, at 8:30 PM, in her crib! It wasn’t without a few bumps:
Day 2 was rough. We put her in the crib at around 8:00 PM, and agreed that we would check in on her every 10 minutes. Shawna put her to bed, so I was up for the first round. I went in to find her standing up and holding onto the rails screaming. I went over to pat her back down, and noticed that she was wet and smelled funny. I brought her out to the living room where, in the light, Shawna noticed that she had thrown up and gotten it all over her pajamas. I proceeded to get her cleaned up while Shawna tackled the crib. When Shawna got into the room and turned on the light, she saw that Graem had not only thrown up in the crib and all her blankets, but over the rail and onto a pile of stuffed animals and the floor. I was really upset that Graem was so distraught, and not sure this whole idea was going to work. So that night we decided that since she had no bedding anyway, we’d take a break.
Day 3: A new strategy. Realizing that the nursery and the crib are uncomfortable for Grammy, I decided that rather than checking in on her every 10 minutes, I’d stay in the room so she could see me, but I wouldn’t interact with her. It took about an hour and a half of crying on Friday night before she stopped crying and fell asleep. I got up a couple of times to try to pat her down, but she wouldn’t stay down and kept trying to climb out of the crib. Just holding her and patting her back over the rail really seemed to calm her down. I put Murphy in the crib for a little while, and that seemed to distract her from crying. It’s so hard when I can feel her little heart pounding because she’s so worked up. She stayed in the crib til around midnight, when she woke up and we brought her up to our room.
Day 4: Modifications to the new strategy. Something I realized I should have done the previous night is nurse her down in her room, so she starts to mellow out in her own room, and gets comfortable with the space. We also moved the rocking chair into her room so I could rock her while nursing, and so I’d actually have a place to sit while she cried. I sat with her for about 45 minutes, but couldn’t take it any longer after Bailey barked her head off and woke Grammy up after she had finally settled down. I did notice that she cried less frantically, and in shorter intervals. She also turned on the little fishbowl toy in her crib a couple of times, and that helped distract her a little. Shawna finished up the night checking on her. Grammy woke up a couple of times after she fell asleep, but Shawna was able to settle her back down. Graem stayed asleep til around 1:45 AM, so we thought we had made good progress. It was funny, even though Shawna and I went to sleep around 10 PM, we both kept waking up and saying to each other, I can’t believe she’s still asleep! I think we were both waiting for the moment when we could bring her back to bed and snuggle with her.
Day 5, tonight: We keep making additions to the strategy, tonight we added book reading in her room prior to the rest of the routine. At first, when Shawna picked out some books and brought Graem into the room, Graem started to cry in anticipation. Shawna just comforted her and started reading to her, and she was fine. Then I nursed her for about 15 minutes, and put her in the crib. She did cry a little bit, and I just hugged her as she was standing and patted her and told her that she’d be fine, and that Mama and I were just in the other room and would check on her. That was at 8:15 PM. Shawna and I agreed we’d check on her every 15 minutes, but by 8:30 PM, it was quiet! I really can’t believe it. She’s made some noise since then, but she’s mostly settled back down. We’ll see what time she wakes up later–I think it will be later and later each night.
