Last week was a BIG week for Emily. We started sleep training! It kind of happened by accident. As I had mentioned, Emily has been especially sensitive with Sy lately. For some reason, at night, she cries extra hard with him - especially when putting her down to sleep. So on Tues night, Emily was crying up a storm, and he just gave up. He said, "Fine! If you're going to cry this hard, you might as well cry yourself to sleep!" And interestingly, she stopped crying when he put her down in her crib. It was almost as if she would rather lie in her crib than to be held by Sy. And after about 40 min of lying there, whining here and there, she fell asleep!
So the next day, I decided that it was important to continue what he had started, and I started to sleep train her naps as well. I had mentally told myself for weeks that I couldn't sleep train her by myself during the day. I wouldn't be able to handle the crying by myself and that I would need Sy to help distract me and prevent me from going in there. But I decided to be strong, and just do it by myself anyway bc I didn't want her to get confused with sleep training. So I did it. I told myself, I will sing her a song like usual, and rock her for no more than 5 minutes. I will wait until she gets sleepy, but put her down awake. And when I did it, she didn't really cry! She kind of whined a bit, but after 15 minutes, she fell asleep! I was so amazed!
Another important thing was that I wanted to see if she would sleep longer than 40 min. Her 40 min sleep cycles have been so frustrating bc I had no idea if she actually wanted more sleep than 40 min or if she just had too much trouble falling back asleep after 40 min. So after she woke up in 40 min, I left her there, and waited her out to see if she would fall back asleep and want more sleep - and she did! She took about 15-20 min to fall back asleep, but when she did, she slept long!
It was a pretty interesting week! Day 1, Emily slept a lot - meaning several 1.5-2hour naps. Day 2, Emily went back to sleeping 40 min at a time. Day 3, she slept a lot again. I couldn't figure out what her pattern was going to be like, but I knew that with a little bit of time as her body adjusted, a pattern would emerge. But either way, each day, she was getting better and better at falling asleep, and was waking up less at night to cry.
On Saturday, we had to go to a bbq at a friend's house down by Newark. I was worried about Emily during the car ride bc she hates car rides, but she didn't cry once! I think Emily is finally getting better about the car! Hooray! This gives me hope that maybe we will finally be able to start going places again. The only thing is, she still doesn't sleep in the car. So after 1 hour of driving, she finally fell asleep for the last 30 min of the drive. Good thing she slept then bc she did not sleep the rest of the day. We tried to continue sleep training her at this friend's house, but it must have been too foreign to her. She couldn't fall asleep and would cry and cry. First time, I let her cry 45 min, and the 2nd attempt, I let her cry for 30 min. It really killed me to hear her cry bc I knew it was partially bc she was scared. She was in some foreign room, and her mom and dad were not there at all. How scary must that be - of course she wasn't going to fall asleep! In the end, we felt so bad for her for not sleeping all day that we left the bbq early to take her home. Once we got home, she fell asleep so fast.
On Sunday, we took Emily to another dohl party at the end of the day. We thought that maybe this would be the ideal time for Emily to go to a party bc it was during her witching hour. But it turns out, we were wrong! Emily likes to take a short cat nap around 5pm, so bc she was out, she couldn't get her nap in. On top of that, the restaurant was very loud, and she doesn't like loud places. So she was so miserable! Emily is usually such a champ when we take her out. No matter how tired she is, she just hangs out just fine. But for the first time, she was not a happy camper. She actually cried! She cried bc she was miserable. And when I took her outside for a small break, she was calm bc it was finally quiet. It's so interesting how she's changing. I guess, now, she knows how to complain and she's not content to just do whatever we drag her to, but will actually voice her opinion and say I want to go home! We did take her home, and she slept very soundly.
It feels like Emily is growing up in the blink of an eye. She's getting kind of close to sitting up by herself. She can do it for a few seconds as long as her hands are supporting her. She also has been getting a little better at pushing the buttons herself for her toy. I once found her after a nap completely having turned 180 degrees in her crib. It's almost as if she turned 5 months and was like I'm a big girl now! Check it out! I wish I could slow down time. I go back to work in a month, and I feel like I'm going to miss out on so many of these little developments. What am I going to do?? I really hate America's maternity policy right now. If only we could be like Canada and have an entire year off. Sigh... in the meantime, I'm going to savor and cherish every second I can.
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