Update: Progressive Waiting Approach

I mentioned before that I read Dr. Ferber's book and tried the Progressive Waiting Approach (CIO with check-ins) with Tommy. I am happy to say that it has been an overwhelming success! The first night he cried for 41 excruciating minutes. Every night after that, the amount of time has decreased and now, just over a week later, he goes down without crying at all!

This is the bedtime routine we've adopted:

• bottle while sitting in the chair in his room, lights on, and no going to sleep
• brush teeth
• read a book
• hug and a kiss and lay down in his crib

and that's it! I wanted to be sure to have a routine that could be implemented anywhere, by anyone. I put him down for the first 7 nights and had Bill do both nights this past weekend. I was concerned that he would have trouble adjusting to Bill but because he followed the same routine, it went over perfectly! 

The first night I did check-ins at 3, 5, 7, 10, and 12 minute increments before he fell asleep. By the third night I stretched it out to 5, 10, 15 minute increments and after that, I never had to go past the 10 minute increment. 

I had decided to only use this approach at bedtime and to continue to get him down for naps however I could. After a couple of days he started refusing to be rocked to sleep for naps and either fell asleep while drinking a bottle, in the car, or by being put down in his crib awake. The wonderful side effect of this is that his naps have stretched out some. He was driving me crazy with his 40 minute naps and while some of his naps are still short, he usually gives me at least one longer nap a day. 

Cry it out methods aren't for every baby or for every family but I am so glad that I did this with Tommy. We had a set back last night when he woke up multiple times with teething pain and all it took was a hug and a quick pat on the back and Tommy put himself back to sleep. Prior to using this method, I'd either have to rock him back to sleep which usually took at least 20 minutes, or bring him to our bed where no one would enter a deep sleep.

It has been wonderful for us. I highly recommend reading Dr. Ferber's book, Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems prior to trying this method if for no other reason than the reassurance that what you are doing has research to back it up. When Tommy was screaming so hard the first two nights, having the book there to reference was a huge help.

I'm a big Dr. Ferber fan now!