Sleep Training: Round 2

In Dane's early weeks, he'd only sleep if we held him. We could eternally alternate sleeping while the other held Dane, or we would have to condition him to sleep in his bassinet. So we turned to sleep training. It took only a couple of nights (a couple of the longest nights of our lives) and we used a modified cry-it-out method called the Ferber method (Google it). It goes like this:
Get him drowsy and put him down. When he cries, wait 5 minutes to console him. Get him drowsy (but awake) and put him down again. Next time wait 6 minutes, then 7... until he's asleep. It took about 4 days and he learned how to put himself to sleep and back to sleep.

He started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks. When he turned 4 months old, and we were good and spoiled with sleep, he began waking again. He gradually woke more as the days progressed and before we knew it he was waking to nurse every hour and a half. He isn't hungry; he eats for a minute and passes out. Mommy is not a pacifier! And so begins our second round of sleep training. He will be fed once in a specific time window a night, should he need, and that's it. This time, we're going cry-it-out all the way. We have one of those super cool video baby monitors, so we don't have to worry about whether he is all right or not. We get to watch him kick and scream and pull at his crib bumper and push himself sideways in the crib without having to go in his room.

We've actually been sleep-training him for a couple of days before Jackie screwed it up. It was going very well until last night. We put Dane down as normal and when he awoke 30 minutes later Jackie figured "well, if I feed him now and get him full, he won't wake to eat later...". Whoa, wrong! He was up all night yelling. It was the worst it's ever been! So all that you hear about consistency being key is TRUE, as well as the fact that once you screw it up, the "sleep training week" resets itself. We'll stick to it (We will, we will, we will...) and hopefully we'll get some sleep in a week. Root for us. We'll keep you posted.