Two huge milestones and goals were accomplished recently that I am really happy about. It has been a long time in the making but Grant took some leaps and bounds in a direction I'm grateful for. He is finally both weaned and sleep trained. I have been trying to wean him from nursing for six months now and it was not going great. He's a mama's boy and wasn't ready to stop just because I was. He also has never gone to sleep without help from me rocking him. I've tried so many different times to get him to self soothe but it was hard and I wasn't consistent with it. I always ended up giving in to his little demands because I knew how much he wanted me. Lately I've been stressing out like crazy at the thought of leaving him for two weeks this summer and I've lost a lot of sleep over it. I knew I wanted him to be sleep trained well before we go because it would bring peace to me knowing that anyone could be able to put him down to bed. After almost a full month of waking up several times a night to Grant I decided I had to be strong and really train him. He needed to learn how to self soothe. I love that I'm his comfort and that I'm his world right now but I also need to know that he can do it if I'm not around. One night last week was particularly bad. Actually it was really bad. No matter what I did I could not get Grant to sleep in his crib. The minute that I would pick him up he'd instantly fall asleep because he was that tired, but as soon as I would lower him down his eyes would shoot open and he would throw a fit until he knew he was safe in my arms again. I struggled with him for a couple of hours before I finally grabbed a pillow and a blanket and I laid down on his floor with him. It was an awful and uncomfortable night. We slept for maybe a combined three hours total and that's with me being generous at that estimation. I decided that night we defintily needed to come up with a solution and that this would be the last night we would struggle with sleep. For the past month our nights had been similarly bad and at this point both Danny and I were exhausted, overwhelmed and I felt like we were near reaching a braking point because we just weren't getting sleep.
I decided to do a fast and I prayed so hard that I could try again with sleep training and be persistent at it. It's been an unbelievable ten days. Maybe I should still be crossing my fingers but I'm still in shock with all it worked out. It's day ten now and it's still going amazing. On day one he cried for 39 minutes after I laid him down for a nap. That was hard. Really hard. But he then laid down and actually napped. Something that he hadn't done in a couple of weeks and his little body really needed it. When he woke up from his nap Addie and I both praised him like crazy for sleeping. He looked so confused. He looked like he wanted to be mad but he couldn't stop smiling at our cheers for him. That night he cried for five minutes and then fell asleep. He woke up around 3am and I went in, changed his diaper, gave him a cuddle, offered a bottle and then laid him back down. He whined off and on for about twenty minutes but then slept in until after 8am. That was his best night of sleep in over a month so I counted it as a win. On day two when I laid him down for a nap he didn't cry at all. He laid down and let me put a blanket over him and watched me walk out the door. I was shocked because I expected it to be rough. He woke up from that nap to Addie and me cheering for him again and he was so happy. He woke up a very happy baby because all this rest that he was now getting was really putting him in a good mood. That night the same thing happened. I laid him down in his bed and he stayed laid down while I put a blanket on him. That time he did whine for me a little but once I reached the door he completely stopped and didn't cry at all. I watched on the monitor as he rolled over and fell asleep. He slept through the entire night and didn't wake up at all. It's been ten days now and the only crying he did was on day one. I don't know if he learned so quickly this time because he's older and could understand what I wanted him to do but I do believe that I received some spiritual help with prayer and fasting. Danny and I now switch putting him down to sleep every other night so he can get used to letting others besides myself do it. This has been such a huge change for him and he's rocked at it. I'm so proud of him and I can tell that this new amount of sleep he's now getting is doing so much good for him. He's finally able to just be put down to sleep with no rocking and he now accepts cow's milk which is also a huge stress reliever. He's definitely the furthest I've ever gone with nursing. I know this wasn't easy for Grant or what he wanted but he's done amazing with these adjustments and I can't say enough how proud I am of him. Like I mentioned earlier it's now day ten and maybe I should still be crossing my fingers but I am very very pleased with him and how this process worked for us this time.
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| Day 1 - Nap |
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| Day 10 - Nap |
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