We finally did the crib transition last weekend, and last night we started sleep training. Over the past month, Ariella had been waking up to nurse quite a bit, and there were many days when I was zombie-fied, yet I still had to function at work. It was time. DH and I are no longer worried about sids, since she's almost 11 months old.
Saturday night and Sunday night we did the crib transition, but I made sure to stay with her until she fell asleep. And, when she cried, I came in and soothed her, even nursed her once a night. I felt it would be too abrupt to go from co-sleeping to sleeping in a totally different room by herself with cry-it-out. But, after that second night, I was completely wiped. So, last night we started "sleep training".
When she started showing her sleepy cues around 8:30pm (rubbing her eyes and yawning), I took her upstairs and put her in her crib. I turned her seahorse on for her to have some soft music, and I left the room and went back downstairs. She cried a little, but not too much. She went to sleep a lot faster than the 2 nights that I had stayed in the room.
Overnight she woke up several times - the first time around 11:30pm. That first time, after a couple of minutes I went in and put my hand on her chest and talked softly to try to reassure her. It didn't really seem to do much good, though, so I left and went back downstairs. She cried for about 10 minutes (almost hysterically for a little bit of that), but she put herself back to sleep. She woke up several additional times through the night, but we just let her work it out herself. We didn't go in or anything. She actually put herself back to sleep faster those times that we left her to herself.
So, no overnight nursing, and I only went in once. Not bad at all for a first night. I was able to catch up a bit on my sleep. When she woke after 6am, Tyree went and got her. I think she got a lot more sleep than she had been getting. I know she didn't need to nurse overnight because she had been sleeping without nursing until after 4am, sometimes until 5:30am or so. She was definitely capable. I think her having a dark, quiet place to sleep (no tv, no parents walking around, etc) will really help her in the long run.
Hopefully as time goes by, she'll wake up less and less and get even longer blocks of sleep. I would think that would really help her overall.
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