Hasta La Vista, Bebe

I hadn't made meticulous plans to strip Carson of his binky (or bebe as he calls...called it). But then Carson began slinking back into his wake-up-every-hour-at-night routine, and after one particularly rough night, my inner sleep nazi erupted and I decided it was time to introduce Carson to Mommy Boot Camp.

I began devising plans to sleep train Carson. I read experts' sleep training blog posts, I gave myself pep talks and I was practically on the verge of drinking my first Mountain Dew to prepare for the long nights ahead. I was going to get Carson sleeping through the night once and for all!

And then it hit me -- Carson kept waking up at night because he would lose his binky and needed help finding it. If I was going to sleep train him anyway, might as well just take the binky away too. One of my motherhood secrets is if you're going to embark on a planned week of awfulness, get all the awfulness that needs fixing over with at once. So if I was going to have a screaming kid over sleep training, might as well get the binky screaming over with at the same time. 

So I made a very sudden, somewhat experimental decision to snip the binky. I was just going to see if he threw an all-out raging tantrum at the damage done to one of his precious bebes. I was just going to test the waters and see how attached he was to his treasured pacifier. So I dangled the bait.

Carson took one try with his broken binky, and threw it out of his crib. He didn't even really cry about it. It was just...broken, and he decided he didn't want it anymore. That was that. He asked about it like two more times a couple days later, but I just reminded him it was broken, and he continued on with his day without any tears shed. Well that was easy.

Miraculously, once the binky was out of the picture, he stopped waking up at night! But getting him to sleep for naps and bedtime was not so easy.

For sleep training, I used similar techniques to what this mommy blogger wrote about. The plan was basically to have a consistent bedtime routine -- putting him to bed at the same time every night. Then go in to check on him every 10 minutes until he fell asleep.

The first night he fell asleep faster than expected (under 1 hour). The second night he fell asleep within 15 minutes of putting him in his crib. And night three was the dreaded regression day which was the worst day. Over an hour of crying. We almost gave up, but he finally hit the sack just before we reevaluated the sleep training plan.

After night three it's been pretty smooth! He still cries when we put him in bed, but it never lasts more than 5-10 minutes. We did notice tonight that he has a sweet spot for when it's best to put him down. If we put him down too early, he's not tired enough, so he screams like crazy. If we put him down too late, he's overtired and screams like crazy. But if we put him down right around 7:45-8:15, he does pretty good.

Tonight we put him down, and he didn't even cry at all! Eli's room is right next to Carson's, and Eli was playing really loudly in his room right after we put Carson down. After a few minutes, Carson yelled, "ELI!" He does this often when he is in bed and can hear Eli next door. But then he said this, "Eli! I'm sleeping!"

Ha. It was hilarious. So there's hope that all this sleep training really might be working.

Next step -- toddler bed, potty training and getting the boys to share a room. But we'll let Carson have a little break before Mommy Boot Camp Phase 2 starts.