What a night...

Last night I tried the "Ferber" method to help A sleep during the night without needing to be nursed or rocked back to sleep. It made for a long night.

She went to sleep at 9. No problems there. She made it all the way until 2 am. At that point her diaper was so wet I went against what I said I was going to do and picked her up. I didn't think it was a smart idea to leave her in a soaking wet diaper for the next 5-7 hours. After that I walked around with her for two or three minutes and laid her back down. Back to sleep no issues.

Half an hour later she was up again. Time to try Ferber's thing.

I let her cry for about five minutes. Went in there and tried to comfort and soothe her without picking her up for a minutes or two. Then left the room. She cried for a few more minutes and then was quiet.

Half an hour later she was crying again. Did the same thing again. She went back to sleep a few minutes after I went in there to soothe her.

Half an hour later she was up again... This continued on every half hour from 2 to 5:30am. Finally when she fell asleep at 5:30 she was out until 9:00 this morning.

Rough. But apparently I'm a sucker for punishment because I'm going to try it again. I've read a lot of positive result stories about the Ferber Method and a lot of moms have said it took two or three days. So I'm going to try it again. Hopefully she does a little better tonight. I know it can't be fun for her and it is really hard for me, but I would rather try to break this habit of needing to be comforted back to sleep by mama when she's 8 months, than have to try to break it when she's 18 months.