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.

When Wyatt was a baby, he went through a similar situation. Great sleeper for a couple of months, then up again.  I know kids go through these phases, but I feel like we might need to go through the same steps we did when Wyatt started getting up. The big problem? I have kind of created my own monster. Instead of letting Brooklyn fuss a little bit when she started waking up again, I just immediately started going into her room and shoving a bottle in her mouth so she wouldn’t wak up Wyatt.  I now see that that was not the best idea.  She now NEEDS me to come into her room and put her back to sleep instead of going back to sleep on her own.

I just spent the last hour trying to let Brooklyn “cry it out” when I put her down, and frankly, it was just too sad.   I ended up rocking her to sleep.  Mostly because it was keeping Wyatt up. He kept screaming from his room, “Moooommm! Tell Brook-a-lyn to BE QUIET!”  Tonight, when inevitably she gets up, I think I might try our favorite sleep method, The Ferber method.  Our version of Ferberizing is one recommended by our pediatrician.  When the baby wakes in the middle of the night, let them fuss for 10 minutes. Then go in their room, let them know you are there, say a few comforting words,etc. then leave. Wait 10 minutes and repeat until the child has basically screamed herself to sleep. The next night you stretch the interval to 12 minutes, and the next night 15 minutes.  When our pediatrician suggested this to us, he handed me his pager number and said, “If by the third night, Wyatt is NOT sleeping through the night, you call me. ANY TIME. I tell all my patients this and I’ve never been called.” I thought he was nuts, or had given me a fake number, but since I worked at the hospital I was able to verify (it was right!).  I never did have to call him.

Since this was successful when Wyatt was a baby, I have high hopes, but of course am still skeptical just ‘cuz that’s my personality.  So wish me luck! And if you see me tomorrow and I look like a zombie, forgive me, I am a working mom with two kids.