I can't believe Carter is turning four weeks! He's growing so quickly. I weighed myself holding him the other day and it looks like he's over 8 lbs already. He's even outgrown some of his early clothes. His double chin is getting pretty ridiculous, as are the rolls on his legs.
This week has been a huge turning point in Carter's sleep training. It's an investment that has been well worth it because he now sleep like an angel (I hope I'm not jinxing myself). Right after Carter came home, I began reading from books on how to best put your child to sleep. There seemed to be two popular approaches. The first is Dr. Sear's camp (author of The Baby Book), where he says that you should hold and rock your child to sleep and only put him down when he's reached deep sleep (takes about 20 minutes). He also believes in co-sleeping, where the baby should sleep with his parents. The other camp is Dr. Ferber's, where he believes in letting a child "Cry It Out," so that he learns to put himself to sleep.
Initially, we carried Carter a lot and let him fall asleep after he nursed. We would all take turns rocking Carter to sleep and then gently put him down in his crib. If he wasn't fully asleep, he would wake up crying and we would have to rock him back to sleep again. You can imagine how this quickly got old. However, I couldn't bring myself just to let him cry and put himself to sleep (the Cry It Out method is also recommended for babies older than 3 months old). So, the sleep training approach we took was one advocated by the author of "The Baby Whisperer," where the approach is somewhere in the middle. You teach your baby to fall asleep on his own, but then you soothe them when they cry too much. We did this for two days and now Carter sleeps on his own. It's amazing. I first nurse him, change his diaper and then play with him until he starts yawning. Then, we swaddle him and hold him for five minutes and wait for him to begin falling asleep. However, before he falls asleep, we put him in his bassinet. He spends a couple of minutes awake, but then eventually falls asleep.
The first day we tried this, he cried for one hour and I had to pick him up 10 times to soothe him each time. Every time I put him down, he would start wailing. I would then pick him up and assure him that he was OK and as soon as he stopped crying, I put him back in the bassinet. During his second nap, we had to pick him up only 3 times before he went to sleep. During his third nap, he grunted a little and then fell asleep on his own. When we put him to bed for the night, he hung out by himself for 10 minutes before falling asleep. During his morning nap today, I watched him lay in his bassinet with his eyes open for a whole 10 minutes without crying. I can't believe how quickly we were able to change his sleep routine.
This routine is called E.A.S.Y., which stands for Eat, Activity, Sleep, and then You. It's a nice routine because it's not structured such that he has to Eat and Sleep during a certain time. Instead, he Eats when he's hungry, followed by an Activity until he gets tired, and then he goes to Sleep. After that, I have some You time. Yeah! This means I get some down time and I sleep better too! It also helps that my aunt is here is she is herself a "baby whisperer." She said that it's hard to change the sleep routine of babies once they have reached a month, so the earlier we taught him to sleep independently, the better. I couldn't agree with her more.
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