(no subject)

[rebbyribs]

All 3 of my kids are sleeping through the night, fairly consistently. Unfortunately, the sleep situation had gotten to the point last week where I said to Ben, "I'm tempted to shut the door to their bedroom and just sleep" (instead of going in and helping Neil and Zinnia go back to sleep). I had been ending up co-sleeping and simul-nursing with both of them in the twin bed most nights or sometimes sleeping with Neil in the toddler bed, neither of which is at all conducive to a good night of rest for me. After talking about it a bit, we agreed to try letting them cry it out a bit. There was quite a bit of angry screaming the first two nights. (The first night, it was mostly Neil - Zinnia slept until about 4 a.m., and when she woke up, I was feeling the need to nurse somebody right away. The second night, Zinnia did the crying, and Neil slept until a little after 5.) The third night, they both slept past 6 a.m., which was good enough for me! Those first 2 nights, I would go in after 2-3 min, 5 more min, 10 more min, and 15 more minutes and tuck them in. Each time, they'd calm down and lay down in the bed right away when I came in but not quite fall asleep. And then they'd scream right after I left. :-(
I'm not particularly proud of using this method, but I'm so happy to be getting longish stretches of sleep for the first time in 4.5 years. (Iris didn't sleep through the night consistently until she turned 3, and by then, we had Neil and Zinnia.)