Lurking Night Monsters

So, I broke my children. I turned them into lurking night monsters who thought that at any peep they should wake up and begin crying. Since I thought that a baby should never cry, I rocked them over and over again for 8-10 hours at night, because I thought it would get better with time. It got worse. I started to find myself with no more than 30 min. at a time at night with silence...all night. Thirty min. of rocking turned into about an hour of sleep per baby. I slept a few hours around 7pm before Brian went to bed and then for a couple more when my mom came in the morning, but overall it still didn't amount to much. Then last Sunday night I finally broke. After hours of quick rocks I found myself rocking Claire in the living room and listening to Ella cry in the bedroom. When Claire was finally asleep I moved her in the playpen and then went and rocked Ella in the bedroom. When she was just about asleep, I began hearing Claire cry in the living room. So I repeated the process only to have Slade wake up to eat. With both girls asleep, I fed him. But then I heard Ella again. So I put Slade in the swing and got Ella. Oh but Claire didn't want to miss out so she began to cry as well. So I put her in the large pen to play while I rocked Ella. Yet, no one liked this arrangement. So hear around 4am I found all three babies crying and I gave in as well. What is wrong with these kids? They are 10 months, even 7 months adjusted and refuse to sleep more than 1-2 hours at a time. That's when I realized that we were the problem, not them. We catered to every need at every second and with three babies, that is exhausting. So I decided that they were old enough now to try out some sleep methods and hoped that one would work. So I put the girls in their cribs and began researching. I liked the no-cry methods but they seemed impossible with three babies, plus isn't that what I've been doing for the last 7 months? But I hated to just let them "cry it out."

So I found a happy medium with what is called "The Ferber Method." Yes this is very controversial and I understand. But until you go 7 months with 25 old week triplets crying all night, I hope people will refrain from judgement. So I bought the book. Basically, you put your kids on a strict bedtime and nap schedule and stick to it. You lay your babies in their cribs asleep drowsy but not asleep and leave the room. They cry. You wait about 3 min. and then go and rub their backs, tell them you love them and leave the room within 60 sec. Then you wait 5 min. and repeat. Every night you increase the visiting intervals. In the middle of the night if they wake you do the same process. I will admit, it sucks. It sucks to hear your babies cry because all they want is to be rocked. But I said I would try this for a week. The first few days we ended up with usually about 30min of crying before all three were asleep. We had about 3 wake ups at night but they never hit 4 min. After about day 4, while we still had about 25min of crying at bedtime, we barely heard a peep from any of them except when we wake them up to eat at 10 and 2. At this point they easily fall back to sleep.

I didn't want to have to do this and every night I still hate the part of myself that doesn't rush in their and rock them to sleep even if it means I only get a couple hours per night. But what makes me ok is that now every morning when they get up, they wake up talking, not crying. They smile all morning and stick out their tongues. They are happier babies. We are still working on the naps but in general, they are doing great. Slade is talking and moving around more than ever and the girls laugh all the time and are way less grouchy in the early evening.

So after 1 week on this program, I am happy to say that not only have the babies mastered their nights, I was able to get just about 7 hours of sleep and am a happy and better mom today!

If your kids are lurking night monsters and you have been broken, I highly recommend this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275395379&sr=1-1