What Worked for Us

Here is my best attempt at explaining Lucy's sleep habits and a few of our parenting methods. I want to begin by saying that I truly believe every child is different and what works for one is not the right formula for the next. I believe in taking cues from the child and listening to their needs. I do not believe in the methods that are currently very popular among many parents. We used Attachment Parenting by Dr. Sears as a guide to go by, but I again want to say that we did not follow this book or any other word for word. I do not think that any book can tell you how to parent your specific child and I have actually steered clear of most parenting books. Why? Because you could read 100 parenting books and every single one of them would tell you to do something completely different - so how in the world are we as parents supposed to know what is the right one to follow? So, I have used Lucy as my guidebook. I have dictated our decisions based on her needs.

Let's start at the beginning. Lucy was 5 months old when we adopted her. For the first several months, she woke up at least 2 times a night for a bottle. That was perfectly fine with us. Tiring, but she was so small and definitely needed the nutrition. Some nights she was up three times, others only once. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to it. Since she generally only woke up the 2 or 3 times, we ALWAYS fed her for the several months. She would always eat and go right back down. The whole awake process usually lasted for around 15 minutes, which was not bad to deal with. At this point, she was pretty easy to get to bed and we put her down around 8 every night. She has always slept for a minimum of 12 hours a night. If for some reason she doesn't get at least 12 hours, she is very tired and grouchy. We have been very lucky in this sense.

Lucy did not stop taking a middle of the night bottle until she was probably around 10 or 11 months. She was the one that dictated she no longer needed this by sleeping through the night on her own. We never pushed this on her. She decided she was ready. Most people's babies were sleeping through the night WAY earlier than this, but again, she was not ready to do that. Once she slept through the night for a couple of weeks, we were done with that bottle. If she woke up in the night, we went to her and comforted her by rocking or bouncing her without the bottle.

After her first birthday, she started becoming more and more difficult to put down to bed. We would rock her for very long periods of time and have her dead asleep and once we put her in her crib, we would have to pat her back for another long period of time. It took a long time to get her to bed most nights. If she heard us leaving the room, she was back up and it started all over again. After a while, it became pretty frustrating because it would take close to an hour to get her to bed.

Let me step back for a moment. We have dabbled in co-sleeping. She did sleep with us for part of the time in VN. She had to have one of our hands on her at all times for the first week. Once she got more comfortable with us, she moved to the crib and we all slept better. She slept much more soundly in the crib and so did I. She moved to her room with no problem at all. I have a lot of sleeping issues, so it works better for me if she is not in our bed. But again, had she needed to be in our bed, we were not at all opposed to it. It is not at all uncommon for her to wake up in the middle of the night and move to our bed. This has gone on since Christmas. We actually broke her of this last week because she has become such a CRAZY sleeper and was kicking us in the head all night long. So now when she wakes up, we just go and calm her down and put her back in her bed. She is fine with it.

Back to the story. As it became more and more difficult to put her to bed (by this time she had been with us for over a year), we started talking about how to handle it. We decided to continue to rock her for a while, pat her back for a few minutes, and then leave her. It took one night of her crying for a while to break the habit. One night where I would go in every few minutes to let her know we were still here and comfort her, and then leave her again. After that, she loved getting in her bed and the whole bedtime routine now takes us all of about 3 minutes. Had she struggled night after night, we would have reevaluated our approach, but she took to it immediately.

I can honestly say that we have let Lucy cry in her crib very few times. If she wakes up in the night, we go in EVERY SINGLE TIME and comfort her. The times she has cried have been going to bed and a few times where she woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to play. The last thing in the world that I would want to do is make bed time or night time stressful for Lucy. I know how awful sleep problems are and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. She NEVER cried until we had had her with us for a very long time and I actually started to feel comfortable with her attachment.

Lucy currently goes to bed around 8 and sleeps until around 9 am without waking up most nights. She takes one nap a day after lunch and it is between 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours most days. At night, we brush her teeth, read her a few books, rock her until she says "Bed!" and then lay her down with her blankees. That is it. She got to this point on her own with one night of being upset that we were leaving her room. We can totally tell when she is ready for a nap and simply ask her if she wants to find her blankees and rock and she says yes and that is it. She never puts up a fight. She is really flexible with her sleep schedule, which is awesome for us and not so constricting. She can easily stay up and happy way past 8 or will willingly go to bed closer to 7:30 if she needs to. She loves to sleep in late in the mornings.

My biggest piece of advice is to listen to your child. Don't force them into a sleep pattern that they are not ready for. If Lucy had not been ready for us to leave her in her room, she would have cried every night that we left her, which was not the case. We didn't make her sleep through the night without our comfort because everyone else's kids were sleeping through the night. My other piece of advice is to be there for your child when they wake up in the night. Let them know that you are there. Attachment parenting is exhausting and hard at times, but so worth it to me. I am so glad that we did not take the easy way out and Lucy's knows that we will always be there for her when we need her. Rock your child as long as you can because very soon they will not want you to. I can't believe how much I miss rocking Lucy and I feel so priviledged when she lets me. Also, don't believe everything that you read. You are not turning your child into a little monster by meeting their needs at night. Look at Lucy - she sleeps 13 hours a night and naps around 2 hours a day. Not bad at all if you ask me. She LOVES to sleep. It took us a while to get there, but we did it. And finally, every child is different. I feel really lucky to have sleeper and I am so sorry to anyone who has a child who does truly struggle with sleep. It is so hard to function with little sleep. Who knows how we will have to handle the next child's sleep. I pray it is this easy!

I don't know how helpful this is, but I have had several questions about sleep, so I thought I would at least share our methods.

And because you know I hate a post without pictures, here are pics of Lucy with Nana, Grandy, and Cayce and then from today at the zoo.

Here is a picture of how lovely our yard looks!