Ferberizing Jacob - Day 1

Wednesday started like any other day - Josh spent nearly an hour and a half (4-5:30am) trying to rock Jacob back to sleep after his THIRD feeding of the night and probably the SIXTH night waking. If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not.  This kid is one high-maintenance sleeper.  Hence our reasoning for researching and starting sleep training.

At first, I was really hesitant to start sleep training, especially Cry It Out (CIO) methods, but after 20 weeks of the above scenario playing out night after night, we decided this was best for us.  And by us I mean Josh, myself and Jacob.  Jacob needs sleep too, and he needs to learn how to self soothe.

We decided on the Ferber method for several reasons, but honestly - I don't feel the need to explain myself or our decision.  Just know I did months of research and was very well-informed.  I'll do a separate post later on the exact guidelines of Ferber and what we did.

But also please know that we hadn't yet completely weaned Jacob of the swaddle and he was still waking 3x/night to eat, so we were actually sleep training and weaning at the same time.  A rather hefty challenge, but we were ready for it!

We started sleep training on Wednesday, October 24 during the day.  Here is a recap of Day 1.

Nap 1 - 60 minutes of crying, no sleep
Nap 2 - 50 minutes of crying, 15 minutes of sleep
Nap 3 (emergency nap) - 0 crying, 2 hours of sleep
Bedtime - Squirmed/fussed for a few minutes, fell asleep.
Woke at 12:45am, cried for 60 minutes.
Fed at 1:45am, fell back to sleep immediately after.
Woke for the day at 5:50am (8 hours, 50 minutes nighttime sleep)

I'm not "spiking the football", as Josh would say, but we had a very good night and we're both very optimistic.  I'll post daily blogs through Day 3, then will post a final summary when our sleep training is complete.  Wish us luck!!!