Those who know me personally would know that we've been trying to get Kai to fall asleep unassisted. We don't want to wait until he's two years of age, like we did with Eli before we over come this hurdle.
Our expectation isn't that we want him to sleep through the night, that would be a bonus. We just don't want to continue to rock him or for me to give him the boob to fall asleep. It's not even the fact that we don't want to do these things but he's kinda over those tactics too. The process takes longer and longer each time and ultimately he's becoming over tired and us irritated. And because he doesn't know how to sleep he doesn't sleep very long either. So the process to get him to fall asleep seems forever constant.
So we decided he's got to learn how to fall asleep unassisted. I've read so many things online about sleeping techniques and methods but I stumbled across a blog which gave me the encouragement, information and confidence to really commit to achieving this. I realised a some things after reading a few articles on this blog:
- We need to establish a regular and consistent day routine as well if we want to see any success with the night time one. We never did routines with Eli, he was fine without one but in hind sight maybe we should have gave it a go if babies thrive best on one. I guess we didn't establish a routine with Eli due to our living arrangements at the time and my attitude towards having a routine. My belief previously was that I wasn't going to let my child's sleep schedule tie me down from getting on with my day or tasks I needed to do. If anything I thought the stimulation probably would help tire them out.
- Both my children are not getting enough sleep and are most likely over tired. This probably explains why Eli is napping later in the day, Kai's really short day naps, early wake ups and resistance to sleep. These things impacts their behaviour and could be the reasons why Eli throws more melt downs than before, how defiant he's become and the frequency of his temper tantrums. They both need more sleep than how much they're getting now.
- Choose a sleep training method that is best for us and Kai. I have asked a few people on how they over came their sleeping battles and then tried to enforce it on Kai with no success. I realised we need to figure out which method or components of various methods we're comfortable in doing and hopefully will work on Kai. Because what ever it is we need to be consistent in doing it for .... ever really.
So armed with some info and motivation to really nip this in the butt we decided to do this. Looking at our calendar and our weekly schedule it seemed there's really no good time to start cause we're never just at home 24/7 for days on end. I do childcare drop off and pick up, Kai spends time with the grandparents, we have play dates with other kids, I need to do the groceries etc. So we decided to just start now. It's like diet and exercise, there's always excuses why not and there's no time like the present.
So next few days will document how we go with our journey. Hopefully its not too painful or take too long.
You can read about our first couple of day's experience here.
You can read about our first couple of day's experience here.
