Ferberizing… take three

I know everyone is dying to know how the ferberizing is going. Here’s a summary…

• Night one: Brooklyn woke up around 2:30 – pretty typical. I let her cry the standard 10 minutes, then went in, reassured her and left the room.  Screams followed me out. My heart broke a bit, but I tried to remember it was for the greater good.  My work AND home life will soon start to suffer if I try to live on 5 hours of broken sleep a night.  Every 10 minutes I would return to her room, sometimes pat her on the back and tell her I was right next door and it was time for bed now. After about 3 times (1/2 hour) I finally turned my nightstand lamp on and started reading my book.  This passed the time for about another 30 minutes. And then I heard it. Wyatt was awake now too. Oh, Lord, what HAVE I DONE!!?? So I went to his room, climbed into bed with him and told him Brookie is just sad right now, she’ll quiet down soon. Then he told me I think she needs a bottle. So observant at three years old. I laid with him until it sounded like she was fading, and his eyes were quite heavy and retreated to my own bed around ten to four. Not so bad for the first night.

• Night two: Brooklyn woke up around 3:00am.  I waited 12 minutes and got up to go into the nursery. I stood outside the door for a few seconds and noticed that the “crying” was more of a whine. A very soft whine that soon diminished into heavy breathing.  I went back to bed and waited. Nothing happened. Was she asleep? Hallelujah.  Six minutes later, the whining started again. Do I wait 12 minutes again? I thought this sounded right so I waited…..2 minutes in, it stopped.  I drifted back to sleep myself. Around 4:00 am, I heard a shrill scream-like noise from the nursery that shot me out of bed.  By the time I hit her room she was asleep. We slept soundly until the morning. I woke up feeling like a rockstar.

• Night three: Brooklyn woke up around 3:10am. (see the pattern here?) I let her fuss for 15 minutes. At the end of the 15 minutes, I have to say, I was kind of surprised that she didn’t put herself to sleep yet. Isn’t the third night supposed to be the golden night of sleep for all? So I wandered in to her room, said some comforting words and went back to bed.  The quiet fussing soon turned into elevated crying with an occasional scream.   WHAT IS GOING ON?  I finally broke all the rules of ferberizing and picked her up around 4:30am to reassure her I was still here and we needed to go to sleep now. I held her for a few minutes so she could calm down and catch her breath, then laid her back down. That didn’t go over well. It was around 5:30am when the noise in the nursery finally ceased.  Wyatt slept peacefully through the entire ordeal.  But of course he was up at 6:15, ready to potty, put on his big boy pants and have breakfast.  I convinced Chris to get up with him.  If he hadn’t so willingly agreed, my head may have started elevating off my neck and spinning circles.  It wouldn’t have been pretty.

Sometime during the fiasco of the third night, as I was stumbling back to bed, Chris rolled over and looked at me. I told him she’s been up for 2 hours! He told me he knew, he’d been up as well.  I found this slightly amusing and irritating since I had been focusing on his snoring during the screaming sessions to try and think about something else BUT THE SCREAMING.  I kept this to myself.  I then told him that if I had one more night of 2 hour blocks of sleep I was going to lose my mind. I think I may.

Night four, here we come.