Sleep Training

Well I am once again home with a sleeping Noah while Danny and Nico are out and about. Isn't this just where I was the other day when I was writing? Rachel (D's sister) hosted a birthday party for his mom tonight and Noah and I left about 7:30. By my standards he was starting to "lose it." By other peoples standards he was probably a "little fussy." But other people don't live the sleep training nightmare (no pun intended) we've lived for the past 6 weeks.

So Noah arrived home exactly six weeks ago today. He spent the first night up crying "omma" for his foster mother (which was literally heart wrenching to listen to) and sleeping on and off for about an hour at a time in our bed. He came home from Korea used to sleeping in bed with his foster mom, with a bottle in his mouth, and on a mattress on the floor. So putting him in a crib any time soon after his arrival was not happening. So we put a mattress on the floor in his room next to his crib and spent the next week or so, shuffling back and forth between his floor and our bed. I use the term "we" loosely as for the first week Danny couldn't even look at Noah without Noah crying, let alone go near him, and I couldn't even put Noah down without Noah crying.

So began our affair with sleep deprivation. You honestly forget how hard the sleep deprivation thing is. Nico is just 2 years old and didn't sleep through the night until well after his first birthday but it seemed so long ago that I didn't remember how tough it was! Well Noah has made it his job to remind us! There was one night during the first 2 weeks that Danny literally slept in 4 different rooms, based on where I was moving throughout the night with Noah. It was that bad!

So we've had some hard habits to break. Like Noah, Nico spent the first 9 months in bed with us, so I wasn't scared off by the co-sleeping thing. And in all honesty was happy that Noah had someone to cuddle with and take care of him. It is much, much better than the alternative of having him in a crib in an orphanage....But the other habit, the bottle in the mouth was a definite no-no. No child of mine was going to have bottle rot and have to get caps put on his teeth!!!

So for about the past two weeks we've finally been working on the sleep training thing and I am happy to report that he is sound asleep in his crib, no bottle in his mouth, no screaming, and I even laid him down drowsy! Once Noah stopped having night terrors (periods where he would scream for 2 hours straight during the night and nothing would soothe him and it was as if he was looking straight through us) and literally pulling his own hair out (from the stress I would guess) and I started to observe all of the signs that he was adjusting well, we slowly got rid of the bottle (it helped knowing that he eats like a horse and didn't really need the little "hits" (as I call them) of formula throughout the night)and started to let him cry a bit in his crib.

The first few nights were rough but I think the most he cried was 40 minutes (with me going in after 20). He is typically waking up 1x a night now and in some cases puts himself back to sleep and in others I just go in and check on him, reassure him, etc. Then he wakes up at 520 a.m. for good. Yep, 520 everyday. And we used to think Nico's 6 a.m. body alarm was bad!

We are definitely getting there though. I never would have guessed six weeks ago, as I stumbled around in the dark, tripping over the dog, swearing, and fumbling for formula that Noah would be sleeping 9.5 hours and just waking up once at this point. Not bad. Now if only we could get the nap thing down...