Paci No More

Take 1

After Rebecca's doctor's appointment yesterday Brian and I were discussing Rebecca's newest sleep habits. We've never had any trouble getting her to sleep. She's always been one to lay down in her crib quietly until she fell asleep.

Until 2 weeks ago. We're not sure what changed- if it was new teeth cutting, new cognative developments, or just plain old toddler stubborn-ness but suddenly our healthy sleeping girl has decided that sleeping is for babies, and darn it! She's a big girl!

She started refusing to go to sleep, taking the Cry and Throw the Paci to See if Mom and Dad Will Come In approach.

After talking to the doctor about this, and deciding that it sounds like this is actually just a normal 18 month development/phase, we figured out a plan of attack.
While I hate the term Cry It Out (otherwise known as letting the child cry themselves to sleep) we decided that, much as we loathe to admitt it, this is probably the best plan for us. She's old enough, and smart enough, to know cause and effect. And lately the cause and effect was: She cries, we go pick her up and let her play for a while before trying to get her to bed again. In hindsight that's clearly stupid. LOL. Of course she'd rather play with us rather than go to bed. We're fun people, after all :D

Over dinner we talked about how we were going to do this and realized that now would probably be the best time to break her of the pacifier habit too. We'd rather not help her learn to sleep on her own again, only to break the paci habit and start over AGAIN in another few months. Our original plan was to have her off the paci by 18 months at the latest anyway. Soooo.... last night was night #1.

It actually went pretty well! We did our normal bedtime routine of quiet playtime, then dinner time, the the bath, then right down into the crib for bed.

We laid her down, sans paci, and said "Time to sleep. Good night" and left. She let out a whimper, then silence. Brian and I just stared at each other in shock. Holy crap. It worked!
She did great! Not a peep out of her all evening!

She woke up around 3:30 crying and asking for the paci. After about 5 minutes I turned to Brian and said "So, should we go in there and lay her back down or something, or just let her cry until she falls back asleep?" Hmm... I decided to try and lay her back down. I didn't want her thinking we'd abandoned her, or left her alone with only George for company or something. ..

Turns out, going in was NOT the right choice! LOL
She looked excited to see me for about 3 seconds, until she realized "Hey, wait a second. Pick me up woman!"
I laid her back down, said "It's sleep time. Good night. I love you" and left. The crying then turned to mad, angry, pissed off screams! Whoops.

Thankfully it only took another 5 minutes or so before I heard her lay right back down and go to sleep. During that 5 minutes I was thinking of every possible scenario that could happen if I were to drive to the hospital and beat the snot out of the L&D nurse that gave my daughter a pacifier without my permission! None of them ended without me locked up so I decided door #2: just going back to sleep, was the best option.

This morning was great too. With all the weird sleep for the last 2 weeks she's been getting up when she hears the shower turn on for me. The earlier I got up, the earlier she wanted to get up too. I have to tell you, it's hard working out at 4:30 am. I nearly fell asleep on my Pilates mat. How many calories does THAT burn?

But this morning, not a PEEP out of her until 7:30. That's my girl :)
I even got a nice little surprise. But that's a post for all it's own!