10mins!
Yeay! Celebraaaaaaaaaaate. Alhamdulillah.
It started with a full hour, then down to 40mins, then 30… then 20… and phew, after a week, now its down to 10.
Whatever am I ranting about?
How long (or short) it takes to put Umar to sleep.
You see, after two weeks of (flexi) maternity leave spent in hotel rooms, Umar had gotten used to being fed to sleep, and co-sleeping with us. Before this we had tried to sleep-train him to some degree of success, as we (or rather I) didn’t want him to be dependent on being nursed or rocked to sleep. But since our vacations he’s back to this dependency.
Other moms may not share how I feel about this, but personally it bothers me when Umar becomes dependent on being nursed to sleep. Apart from my worries of how he would cope when I travel for work, I realised that when he’s nursed to sleep he tends to wake up more often during the night, and will depend on being nursed back to sleep. Its tiring for both of dear Umar and me. It wasn’t until I read up about it did I learn that there is a definite correlation between the habit of being nursed to sleep and disrupted sleep in babies.
So we started sleep-training again since we got back. We started our bedtime routine again, experimenting various methods suggested in books. Trust me, we tried it all, including the cry-it-out method.. which was so painful and I think completely unnecessary. We tried the middle-ground methods as well.. they worked, but the repeated cycles of picking him up and putting him down tired me out. Finally, we found what worked for us, and I wanted to note this down for my own memories…
D starts the sleep routine by reading him a book, followed by quiet play with his flashcards. He usually gets bored pretty quickly, and would turn to me to whimper and ask to be nursed. I then nurse him, but carefully watching him. Once he looks sleepy, I will unlatch him, and talk to him abit, ask him if he’s ready for bed. By this time, he will be sleepy but in a good mood, as he’s not hungry, and (I like to believe) feels loved. I put him in his cot, while still talking to him. He will look at me, and look around him, and then look around his cot, as if familiarising. Without petting him, just sitting by his cot, I turn on the mobile, or sing him zikr, which makes him even more drowsy. He will flail his head from side to side, his eyes half-closed. Every now and then he will whimper… sometimes he will start to cry, and if he does I pick him up for awhile until he calms down, then I put him back down. His eyes will slowly start to close, and within a few minutes my darling Umar is off to dreamland… Yeay! No tears! Phew.
I guess the key thing is to find out what works for you. And persevere! It took us a week to get to this point, and teamwork helps! We’re happy campers now, with no baby in between, for the next few hours at least. Umar doesn’t sleep through the night like he used to when he was 2 – 3 months, but he also no longer wake up every hour (which happened when I nurse him to sleep). Nowadays he wakes up once, which works well for me, cos I get a good 5 hour rest with hubby before Umar needs a feed at 3 or 4am. At this time, I just love nursing him and keeping him in the bed with me till the sun comes up.
And when the sun comes up, its my favourite time of the day, cos its always Umar’s favourite time of the day. Since his early months, Umar has always greeted us with the happiest of smiles the minute he opens his eyes. And if you tickle him silly, this is what you get….
This was taken before the sun came up on the Maldives… cos my little one suffered from a little bit of jetlag. Hmm yes I will get around to blogging about the trip once my backlog of work becomes a slightly less disgusting pile. Buenos nochez!
June 26, 2009 at 9:35 am
hehe hope that when he grows up, he does not automatically sleep when he hears the zikr..
June 26, 2009 at 8:43 pm
cry it out cam merepek to me. last 2 nites after milk b4 sleep, iman tak tido. what made him sleep was when he grabbed both my hands and then i goyang2 kan my hands kanan kiri and played with him. then he khayal and slept. kena explore lagi what works for him.
i pun nanti dah nak kena start sleep train. i pun cam u rasa tak nak dia depend on nursing before sleep. tapi alhamdulillah so far when he does that, he’d be awake only twice. hopefully i’ll be able to put him to cot again and get that bed space yang dia dah share sama-sama.. hahehehe
June 27, 2009 at 8:27 am
Yeah there’s some controversy over the CIO (cry it out) approach, and I was personally very uncomfortable with the strict CIO… can’t imagine leaving Umar crying for a full 5 mins before going to him… 5 mins is a long time when your little one is crying..! I guess for me after spending a whole day away from him I feel bad about making him cry to sleep. But I do believe what some experts say about crying being a necessary part of helping children develop healthy sleep habits.
So I used the Hoggs method, which is the middle ground between CIO and no-tears. The first few days of sleep training he kept looking for the breast and cried intermittently for about 40mins.. with me picking him up when he gets really upset, and putting him back down when he’s calmer. Sometimes D holding him helps. By about the 4th day he seemed to understand he won’t get to nurse to sleep, and was content with just having me by the cot, comforting him and zikir-ing him to sleep. Alhamdulillah.. I’m so relieved now.. but have to istiqamah!