The Sleep Lady...

...I'm finally sitting down to tell you about my visit with the Sleep Lady. Here goes...

The Tuesday before Christmas, I visited with the Sleep Lady about how my little AR will.not.sleep. After a TWO HOUR appointment and reviewing my 15 page sleep log I'd kept, the conclusion was this: AR is VERY smart and very confused. We were doing CIO at night but then we'd rock her for naps so she was totally confused as in, "Okay, mom, you help me sometimes but other times you don't-make up your mind!" She's also very smart because she knows if she cries long enough, she'll get her way and one of us will pick her up and love on her. Let me tell you that talking about sleep after not having any the night before is EXHAUSTING! I left there with a plan but still felt defeated...and tired.

She gave me 2 steps to follow. The first step was to teach AR how to fall asleep on her own and to space out her naps. At first, spacing out her naps was AWFUL! She would be so crabby for the last 15 minutes so we typically would spend that time in the basement with the dogs because, boy oh boy, do her doggies make her happy! She still gets a little crabby when it's close to going down but I must say that laying her down for naps and bed is so much better. I'm talking 5-10 minutes of little fussing which is a huge improvement from 30 minutes of hysterical screams. We still haven't gotten them to be long naps yet so she sometimes wakes up still crabby but the lady said that it could take 2-3 weeks before they get to be lengthy naps. Only twice have we had meltdowns at nap and then it was less than 5 minutes and that was because it was the holidays and we weren't home.

The second step is to deal with night wakings. We haven't started the second step because we really didn't need to. She STTN three nights in a row. Our Christmas gift was an 11 hour stretch of sleep from her and she probably would have slept longer except I got paranoid because I hadn't heard her. Then last night, she was up from 9:15-11:15, slept with me until 2:50, cried unconsolable for an hour then Matt got her to bed around 4. I think it was a bellyache because she hadn't had a bowel movement the day before and kept passing gas. We'll see how the next couple nights go and then probably start step 2 next week. Side note: Last night, before bed time, Matt was on the floor with her while she was crawling around and playing. She was right by his face when she let it rip! It was hilarious!

I'm worried though because I've been with her since Saturday (minus today, she's at the sitter's so I could get some errands run and things done around the house) and I don't know how my MIL and sitter will do with her. The first day we tried it, my MIL had her and she cried for 45 minutes to take a nap. I gave her all the paperwork to read and she read it as lay her down at 7 when it really said no earlier than 7 but lay down when tired. Oy! It's definitely a vast improvement but we still have a long way to go.

I love my sweet AR and I just want her to be rested and happy. It breaks my heart to hear her crying last night even when I'm holding her and rocking her. I never thought I'd send up poop prayers but I do a lot these days!