Thursday, December 18, 2008

Ferberized.

Last night we began our 'Ferberization' of Elliott. I love this baby, and he's so warm and snuggly, but I simply cannot sleep with him in my bed another night!

Things actually went surprisingly well! First off, Andy bought a sound screen for the room, and I think that helped immensely. I put E down at 10:30, and he whimpered and cried for about an hour off and on. With the Ferber method you go in after 3 minutes to let them know you are there, and to also assure yourself that they are okay - but you do not pick them up! You stay in the room for no more than 2 minutes. I stay in there long enough to replace his woobie and pat his hands, but then leave him again after a few sweet words. The next time he starts to fuss you give it 5 minutes before going in the room. After that it's 10 minutes for the rest of the night.

What's hard in the middle of the night is if he wakes up determining if you should start the process over again, or let him have the opportunity to self-soothe. I learned this the hard way - but as long as they're awake it's a good idea to at least peak in on them. At one point Elliott was laying on one end of the crib and was now perpendicular to it. So the alarm on our sensor pad went off. This began a whole series of rolling over and getting fussy about it. The first time I rolled him back over and repositioned him in the center of his crib. The second time I could just tell his cries seemed muffled. Sure enough, he was on his tummy, but this time he was up against the side of the crib with one arm between the bars outside the crib, the other underneath his body and face down. This really freaked me out. Since both of his arms were indisposed he couldn't get the leverage he needed to get off his face. I rolled him over again, gave him his woobie and he promptly relaxed, rolled to his side and fell back asleep. At this point he slept for a solid two hours and woke us all up at 7:15. This is way earlier than we normally wake up, but according to the book when they wake after 6 am it's time to get up. So we did! Elliott woke up happy and smiling. I gave him a bath, he ate and he's taken a couple of cat naps this morning.

I am really excited by this. I will start putting him to bed a little earlier every night until his bedtime is around 9. This will leave me with a couple of hours to have some me time, or for Andy and me to have some us time! The Ferber method isn't nearly as harsh as previously thought, I think it will really work for us. Of course, I'll update you tomorrow!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That's great! Sounds like E did pretty well.

We were a lot more cruel with our daughter. One night it was decided that she was to sleep alone in her bassinet (next to the bed still). So, I fed her, changed her, got her all ready for the night. I then got her nice and drowsy on my chest. Then I wrapped her up, put her down in her crib, and waited. At first she kinda looked at me like, "hey, when are you going to pick me back up?"...but when she realized she wasn't getting picked back up, she began to cry. And she cried and cried. My husband and I actually turned on the baby monitors and left the bedroom. She cried and cried for about five minutes, which felt like forever. My husband had to hold me back from running in the room and getting her. But after that five minutes, she was out like a light, and ever since we haven't had problems with putting her down (except lately because she's teething).

My sister is currently in labor, speaking of babies. WOOOO

alicia said...

woah! yeah, the first night we did it (a month ago) elliott cried from 11pm until 4am. straight. it was miserable. there was no consoling him! finally i brought him to bed with me, i was so tired!

Jeni Q said...

Good job!
I'm too lazy to form my link properly so here: http://www.iheartdavids.com/2008/06/thank-you-doctor-ferber/

Jeni