Operation make-babies-sleep-in-their-own-bed is a go!

For most of the girls' lives we have co-slept part of or the whole night. It started out of convenience, because we were constantly feeding one or the other (or, more often, both) all night long and the easiest place to do so was on our bed with the babies between our legs. So it felt natural to keep them with us the whole night. Eventually we worked on getting them into their cribs but after many sleepless nights, and Shawn needing to go to school and me needing to go to work so both of us needing some actual rest, we started bringing them to bed halfway through the night when they'd wake up. This whole time they were falling asleep in bed with us and we'd transfer them to their cribs once asleep. They never were able to fall asleep on their own, and no method worked or felt right.

But a while ago we decided that enough is enough and when we got back from our trip, before Shawn started school again, we were going to train them to spend the whole night in their cribs. They could fall asleep with us, we love our nighttime bedtime ritual and don't want to give up on that quite yet, but wanted them to spend the rest of the night in their cribs. It's time for the adults to have their bed back.

So last night was the first night and it was HARD. We had a late start due to jet lag, and it was 2 1/2 hours before the girls finally both fell asleep/ Bracja woke up again at about 4:45am but was soothed back to sleep fairly easily, and Eli needed to be soothed back to bed herself closer to 6. It was a bit harder than her sister, but we managed and both then slept till about 8am. Success!

Tonight it happened MUCH quicker, taking only about an hour and both girls were asleep by 8pm. We'll see how the rest of the night goes.

How are we doing it, you might ask? Well, I am really not comfortable with the CIO method (Cry It Out). And I don't mean just leaving the kid to cry, I mean I dislike even Ferberizing (basically, soothing the baby in longer and longer intervals, letting them cry in between). Yes, part of what we did with the girls was once or twice letting them cry for no more than five minutes, just to help them wear themselves out, but otherwise what we did was abide by one golden rule: no leaving the crib. They could have bottles, back rubs, kisses, hugs, songs, anything as long as they stayed in the crib the whole time. With any luck, eventually they'll come to realize that bedtime is bedtime, and we mean business, and they'll just give in more easily to their own exhaustion once they learn we really won't take them out.

Videos to come!