Kent had a business trip this week that lasted several days. I decided to take advantage of this by introducing Erik to sleep training and to cut out night-time nursing - why should both Kent & I both have to suffer through this difficult task, right?! Up to this point, I was still getting up and nursing Erik at least once every night - sometimes twice. If Erik woke up, he expected to eat and I had let him have his way in this, but this was the week my tolerance ended!
Sleep training started on April 1 (Erik is now 8 months old); I nursed him at 8:30pm and put him to bed. He didn't eat again until 7:00am the next morning! Of course, he did wake up 5 times during the night to fuss and cry, but thankfully, he would only cry for about 10 minutes and then went back to sleep. The hardest part was not going into his room to pat his back or give him his pacifier since I didn't want him to think he would be fed if I showed up. The 2nd night of sleep training was not as great as the first night - he woke up multiple times between 11pm and 1am, then again at 3am and then several times between 5-6am. His longest awake & crying episode lasted a total of 30 minutes; that was the hardest one to get through. However, I've been told that I'm very lucky in this since some of my friends have had their babies cry for over an hour during sleep training. Ouch. The next several nights showed slow & steady improvements with Erik still waking up about 5 times, but being very easy to put back to sleep. When Kent came back from his business trip, I would send Kent into the nursery to give Erik his pacifier which shortened the crying episodes. By the end of the week, Erik was waking up maybe twice a night, but he wasn't desperate for food. He's a very chubby baby, so he clearly has been getting enough to eat!
This week ended with us attending the annual Hilliard Easter party on Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful to visit with friends, eat great food and watch Erik explore new surroundings. We put him down in the grass to "meet" Brady Grodack who is only a few months older than Erik. After a few minutes, Erik decided that he didn't like how grass felt and voiced his displeasure until he was picked up!! The party included an Easter egg hunt and a visit from the Easter bunny - Erik discovered that the plastic eggs are the perfect size for his hands and he loved playing with them. He wasn't sure what to make of the Easter bunny, but at least he didn't scream when we took pictures!
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| Erik & Kent on the hunt for Easter eggs |
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| Erik is much more interested in the plastic eggs than the giant bunny next to him! |
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