Sleep training update: Momma wins this round

Did I already mention that my life has been in a state of affliction ever since Tru started sleeping on his new bed? He’s been getting up several times every night crying and one of us has to go in and sit beside him till he falls asleep, which can take up to a whole hour. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. IN THE DARK. Sometimes, I would fall off my chair and cause a ruckus, which was actually counterproductive. That’s not to mention the 30 minutes I spend trying to get him to sleep in the first place.

I’ve got to make sure he’s truly asleep before I tiptoe out because I tried sneaking out too soon and ended up being busted by the sleep-deprivation mafia. It was like a flashback to my sneaking back home past curfew days as a teenager. Thanks to all that training, I can enter and exit rooms without so much as a squeak. But my son, he can detect your presence by the oxygen balance in the room. Either that or he’s psychic.

I also tried shifting my chair nearer and nearer to the door but he doesn’t care where I am as long as I’m inside the room. When I shifted my chair outside the door (leaving a small crack so he can still see me), he goes ballistic and climbs off to come stand beside me.

In the past week, I must have carried him back to his bed at least 1000 times. I lost count after a thousand. But the good thing is that now I have arms of steel. Silver lining.

As the week wore on, it was becoming apparent that our methods were not working so we decided to show hand, as it were. We put him in his bed, kissed him goodnight and left the room. The first night, it was like we unleashed a very angry bobcat in the room. Every 10 minutes, we would go in to calm him down and tuck him in again. 40 minutes in, he finally stopped and fell asleep on his bed. That’s when we did our victory lap. If he had ended up slumped over the floor, we would have been so guilty that we’d spend the next year sitting beside his bed every night. I would end up snappish and foul-tempered and eventually become the crazy woman with a hundred cats.

Instead, we now sleep through the night again because ever since then, he hasn’t woken up once. Also, the shrieking has gotten shorter and shorter. Last night, it took him 3 minutes before he fell asleep. And it was more of a whine rather than a shriek so that’s a good sign.

Update: I put him down tonight and NO CRYING. He didn’t even attempt to get off his bed. He just looked at me with resignation, flipped over and slept. That, my friends, is an out of the park and into the stratosphere kind of home run. VICTORY.