Sweet Dreams...What are those???

**Edited to add a part at the end that was inadvertently deleted**
Over here in Martinezville, we are completely up to our necks in trying to figure out how to help Jayden sleep better. We are in our 5th week of transitioning him to his own room and, although at times it appeared we were making some progress, this week has really been a challenge. It's always taken, at the very least, an hour to get Jayden to sleep and then he usually wakes about 2 times a night. Tuesday night, it took 3 hours to put him to bed and we finally just caved and let him sleep with us. He was sleeping in 5-10 increments at a time and at the rate it was going, it appeared that would be going on all night long and I had reached my breaking point. I felt like completely at a loss with how to help Jayden and it nearly broke my heart that he seemed so tired and was just unable to get comfortable and stay asleep.


It's been interesting.


But...


I am hopeful again.


We hired a sleep consultant. I would think I was crazy if I wasn't me (and already feeling a bit insane from lack of sleep) but we are truly to that point of desperation where we are trying anything. I filled out this huge long information consultation form (which will be funny to read when Jayden is a teenager and sleeping TOO much, I'm sure) and now we are waiting on a response. The sleep consultant will provide us with a plan based on the information that we provided and we'll give it a go. 


The nice thing about this consultant we hired is that there is a 100% guarantee which says basically that if we are not happy with the consultant (not necessarily the results since those could be awhile in coming, I'm hoping like 1-2 weeks) then we will get our money refunded. I also made sure that we provided our payment through PayPal so the consultant doesn't have access to our credit card information. I was a little wary of hiring someone I found on the Internet but after some decent research and finding out about the guarantee, I was ready to give it a go. I'll try to provide an update next week after we've had some time to put the new plan into action.


It's funny because I know every parent goes through this stage at some point. For us, Jayden was such a good sleeper almost the entire time we co-slept so we are just now encountering these sleep issues that a lot of parents encounter when the babies are much younger. I've had time to reflect on whether I would do it differently next time (which happens to be right around the corner) and you may be surprised to know that I wouldn't. I actually feel more comfortable handling the excessive crying/screaming that Jayden does now because he IS older. I think it would be so much more unnerving and worrisome if he was a 6 month old and going through this separation anxiety. In fact, I'm almost positive that I couldn't, and wouldn't, do it. 


For me, I don't feel comfortable letting my children cry-it-out. (And to be clear, when I refer to the cry-it-out method, I'm talking about leaving the child in a safe environment where he/she cries for a period of time before they (1) fall asleep or (2) the parent goes in and pats their back and reassures them before leaving the room again.) I know it works for so many people and now that I've had children, I can't even say that it's wrong. I say, to each his own. Because truly all the parents that I know love their children so much and would never do anything that they thought was harmful to their child. So I'm OK with other people using the Ferber/cry-it-out method. (Not that anyone needs my approval...) I've decided, however, that I'm not comfortable with that. And I have seen that DJ isn't either. I will admit we tried it twice though...sort of. One day for a nap, I put Jayden in his crib and he cried for 10 minutes before he started throwing himself against his crib. I felt I had to intervene before he gave himself a concussion. Another time DJ was at his wits end of how to get Jayden to sleep one night, and we tried it again. We made it 20 minutes that time before DJ went in and slept with Jayden in his room. Both times basically reinforced to me that crying it out wasn't the approach that would work for Jayden. 


The thing I really like about the sleep consultant is that she's not extreme to either side of the sleep method spectrum. She's kind of in the middle and willing to take into account each parent's philosophy and work with us. We are taking the approach where we stay with Jayden as he cries and often screams his little head off and rock and hold him until he falls asleep. We're not comfortable with leaving him in his room to cry and become anxious in order to exhaust himself and finally fall asleep but we are comfortable with him fussing/crying a little in order to fall asleep. We want him to get to a point where he can fall asleep on his own and sleep through the night. That's our goal.


Last night, because I absolutely refused to go another single, solitary night without changing something about our approach since what we were doing obviously was not working, we made a few changes. First we removed the front part of the crib to make it into a day bed. Jayden LOVED it. He ran right over to his bed and wanted to sit on it. We also decided to see what happened if we didn't feed him his usual pre-bedtime snack of Greek yogurt. We had been giving Jayden a serving of Greek yogurt every night for probably the past 2 months and it sort of hit me yesterday, that it wasn't working! He was still waking up in the middle of the night, seemingly starving and it didn't matter how much we fed him beforehand so we decided to forgo the yogurt. Lastly we decided to play his music all night long. Typically we would turn it off once he fell asleep or shortly thereafter but, desperate individuals that we are right now, we're trying everything big and small, so the music stayed on all night long.


I am happy to say that last night was much better. Not perfect by any means, it still took him an hour to fall asleep, screaming and crying ensued and he woke up once, again more screaming and crying before falling back asleep only 15 short minutes later and then he slept till 6! And he didn't eat anything the whole night, which is a big success because he is old enough to go a whole night without needing to eat. So we'll try it again tonight and see if the things we changed actually did make a difference or if it was just a fluke. Either way, I know help is around the corner and that's enough to get me through one more night.