I guess last night was "Night One"

Caleb is a horrible sleeper and has been for a long time now. He wakes up multiple times a night and I still feed him in the night because it's the path of least resistance and gets us both back to sleep the fastest (sorta). But it's really not the best solution as we all know. I often end up falling asleep in the chair and not sleeping good because I'm sitting up. Lately, I'm just plain exhausted from getting up with him a bazillion times a night with him. He needs to learn how to sleep!!!

I kept hoping that he'd just "get it" without having to cry it out (CIO). I even read The Sleep Lady over the last week in hopes of finding a gentler approach than the CIO method  that we did with my other kids. Plus I didn't want to make him CIO with his reflux and ear infections and teething. My sister says I'm just babying him and making excuses and that I should just night-wean him and let him CIO all at the same time and get it over with. And that I should do it now. I agree with her, but I can't bring myself to do it. We have his reflux under control, he got tubes so no more ear infections, and he only has 2 more teeth left to get. So I really have no excuse. Well, I did have one other excuse - he had a fever for 6 days straight and felt miserable. That made his night sleeping even worse and put me to the point of beyond exhaustion. I can't even drive without being afraid I'll fall asleep at the wheel. I knew we were close to taking the CIO plunge, but I didn't want to sleep-train while he had a fever. He just got over his fever so, like I said, I have no more excuses. And the scary thing is I think he's getting close to climbing out of his crib (he tries, but hasn't yet) so my window of opportunity is slowly closing. I know all his problems are my fault but I really just haven't gotten up the motivation to fix him... till last night.

He woke up, I fed him back to sleep and then ended up falling asleep sitting up in the chair for an hour. I woke up from awful neck pain and he was sound asleep on my lap. I put him in his bed and he woke up as I laid him down. Usually he just lays back down, I sit with him for a minute and he goes back to sleep - no big deal. He does put himself to sleep at night, but I have sit in the room with him. I don't have to hold him or feed him so we've made progress there, and that's why he usually just lays down and goes to sleep. Last night after I put him in bed, he woke up and started crying. I got him out to feed him again, but it had only been an hour and I thought that was just crazy.  I had no milk left, I was tired and annoyed so I just put him back in his bed. He got mad and refused to lay down. I know he was tired. He sat there on his knees, whining and would fall asleep sitting up, but then tip over and it'd wake him up. Then he'd scream/cry again, fall asleep sitting up and repeat the process all over. I sat with him in his room. A few times he stood up and tried to get out. He kept saying, "I wanna go downstairs." "I wanna to go to mommy's room." I showed him it was dark outside and he has to sleep when it's dark. (A concept he just started understanding this week so that's a plus.) Eventually... FINALLY... he gave in and went to sleep and slept for a good 3 hours till he woke up at 6:30. That's amazing in itself because he has only been going two hour stretches at the most lately. (Yes, he's like a freaking newborn who wakes up every hour or two wanting to eat...and I caused this. I realize that!)

While I sat there with him, exhausted and annoyed, I decided it was time and it's all his fault. I told him while we were sitting there, "You know you're about to make your life really miserable in the next few days buddy. You've just worn out your sympathy from mom." He shouldn't mess with the sleep-deprived mom!  We got into a battle of the wills and I'm going to win this one. We both need our sleep!!! I wanted to wait till his last 2 teeth broke through, but now that we already went through that last night I might as well keep going and call that night one. He just sealed his fate!  I know it really won't take long, but it's just such torture for the first few nights.   I have to stick with it now and sleep-train and night-wean my spoiled little 7th child!

Wish us luck!