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Whoever came up with the phrase, “slept like a baby”, probably did not have any children. After months of very little sleep, Ed and I decided it was time for some changes in Jack’s sleep habits.  Since Jack arrived, we’d actually read several books on the sleep topic: Babywise, The No-Cry Sleep Solution, and The Baby Sleep Book.  In the end, after night after night of hours of bouncing, walking, and rocking, we came to the conclusion that it was time to Ferberize Jack.  We didn’t come to this decision lightly.  Most people who have heard of the Ferber method usually associate it with crying, and while Richard Ferber’s method is not just about letting your child cry, I won’t sugar-coat it.  There was a good deal of crying in this household when we implemented it with Jack two weeks ago.

For those that haven’t heard of Richard Ferber, or his book, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, which details his method of helping your child sleep, he’s the director of The Pediatric Center for Sleep Disorders in Boston.  The basic concept behind Ferber’s method is that you help your child learn new sleep associations.  The goal is to create a routine and environment that your baby associates with sleep.  Once your baby learns these new sleep associations, he can both fall asleep on his own and, if wakened, can fall back asleep because your he associates his surroundings with sleep.  For example, we had gotten into the habit of bouncing Jack to sleep every night on our yoga ball.  Once Jack would fall asleep, we would quietly transfer him to his crib or one of us would lie down with him, only to find he would wake 45 minutes later crying, and we’d have to get up and start the bouncing routine all over.  In this scenario, the last thing Jack remembered was being bounced and contentedly falling asleep.  The next thing he knows, he’s awake, he’s in a dark room, in a crib, and he’s not being bounced by mom or dad anymore.  It’s obvious to see why this would upset most, if not all babies.

We started our Ferber training on a Tuesday, when we were having an exceptionally bad night.  Jack was crying and would not fall asleep after at least an hour of bouncing.  Ed and I had both read Ferber’s book and were ready to implement some of the methods suggested.  We knew there would be crying, although we were unsure of what to really expect.  I have to say that you must have nerves of steel to Ferberize your child.  It’s hard to do if you are completely on board, but if you start to doubt your decision, it’s nearly impossible to go through with it.  Fortunately, when one of us started to falter, the other one was there to carry on.  And, I have to say, for as hard as this is… it really does work.

On our first night, there was a lot of crying.  Jack was not happy about being put down in his crib awake.  We’d done a baby massage, read him two books, and sang some lullabies, then set him down.  We followed the progressive waiting method suggested in Ferber’s book, going in every 3 minutes, then every 5 minutes, etc., to reassure Jack that we were not completely abandoning him.  At some points, I couldn’t go in.  Ed had to do it and I had to sit in our bedroom with my headphones on while watching a movie on my laptop.  But, eventually, Jack figured it out.  He fell asleep.  For 39 minutes.  More crying ensued and the hopefulness I felt when he fell asleep the first time melted away and I started to lose hope.  I started doubting our decision and questioned whether this was the right thing for us.  With Ed’s reassurance, we let him cry and 28. long. minutes. later, he fell asleep again, this time for a few hours.  Needless to say, Jack was exhausted the following day, and naps were pretty horrible.  There was a good amount of crying for each nap, but Jack eventually fell asleep on his own.  I was actually feeling alright about the day, as Jack had shown us one major accomplishment: that he had the ability to fall asleep on his own.

Night 2 of Ferberization started pretty well.  Jack cried for less than he did on night 1 before falling asleep.  But then, it turned into a train wreck.  After sleeping just 38 minutes, Jack was up again, crying.  Eventually, he fell asleep, but for just 14 minutes, and he was up again.  I was in tears as I listened to our child cry and we continued to go in and reassure him.  Eventually, Jack drifted off to sleep for a marathon 4 hours.  Night 2 turned out to be much worse than night 1.  I was starting to wonder if we should abandon ship.

Day 2 of Ferber training was our turning point.  I took Jack up to his room for his morning nap, read him two books and sang a few lullabies, then gently placed him in his crib.  I steeled myself for his crying, but before I even turned on his white noise machine, I noticed him lying still and his eyes started to close.  I quietly turned on his fan and left the room as he napped for an hour and 40 minutes.  I figured it was just luck, but he went down for every nap this way.  For one nap, he fussed for a couple of minutes, but then fell asleep.  All without any rocking, patting, or intervention on my part.

Night 3 was an improvement over night 2.  Jack went to sleep with no crying, but woke up after only an hour of sleep.  He cried, but eventually settled and slept for 3.5 hours.  He woke up to feed, and went right back to sleep for another 4 hours.  Since then, we’ve had decent nights of very little or no crying at all.  Jack still gets up every 4 hours to eat, and I know our next step is to cut back on his feedings.  He has his good days and bad days with naps.  Some days, he only naps for 45 minute stretches, and others he’ll go for 2 hours.

In a nutshell, our Ferber experience hasn’t been the magic bullet that some parents experience.  Some people find they start Ferberizing their child and she’s sleeping through the night on the third night.  Still, it’s way better than what it was.  Jack is happy after getting a good night’s sleep and we’re happy when he sleeps for four hours straight.