To Ferber or not to Ferber?

That is a very important question! I started sleep training Asher this morning. With teeth on their way I have been getting no sleep! Any single twitch and he's awake so I end up sleeping in some akward position that leaves me crippled in the morning. So the time has come for our little one to sleep in his own bed.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I enjoy the ease of night time nursing in bed cuddled up with my little man. But it is seriously starting to interfere with my slumber. He is starting to take advantage of me and my boobies. Some nights he can nurse every two hours! Now the Newman Breastfeeding Lactation Consultants would say its natural and normal. That he is just checking in with me and wants to feel secure. But I have something else on my agenda... Sleeping more than two hours at a time!

So we begin. I am using a mix of advice that I feel is right for out family. Mainly derived from excerpts from "The Sleep Site". Their philosophy, which correlates with most sleep methods out there, states that a baby must learn to fall asleep on their own. To do this he must be placed in the crib sleepy but awake. This is going to be difficult because anytime you place Asher in his crib when he isn't dead asleep, he startles awake. And no nursing to sleep or soothers allowed!

So my method which allows the baby to be rocked to sleep as long as you put them down before they are conked out, may take a lot longer than the Ferber "cry it out" method. You spend less and less time each night rocking them to sleep until one night you put them right in without rocking them at all. They eventually learn to sleep on their own. This could take a couple weeks. The Ferber method could be done by Sunday if I had the emotional stability to let him cry. I think if he was older I would do it, but 4 months is just too young for a baby to be crying their heart out for comfort.

I am using a little bit of the Ferber method however. The sleep site says most parents respond too quickly in the night to their waking babies and often wake them up when they could be just stirring and going back to sleep on their own. So you are supposed to wait ten minutes before getting your baby unless they are really crying hard. This won't be easy when we share a room with his crib and he is less than a foot from my bed.

So if I seem a little off in the next little while please excuse my behaviors. I may seem cranky or in my own world. I may 'appear' intoxicated or confused. I may spew vulgar insults to children and the elderly. Just know that I don't mean most of it and let me be.