Day five of sleep training...and its brilliant

So I have been pretty terrible at writing my blog. But I have made a decision to try and write one post a day. After all, it is only for me and no one is reading it. So why not jot down my thoughts and ideas.

I am also feeling a lot better… because I got some sleep. Yesterday was the fifth day of Violet’s sleep training. It’s working, it’s amazing, and it is hard to put into words how happy it’s making me (although of course, I have to try, that is literally the point of a blog).

We should have started when she was much much younger. But E was just not well enough and things were so hard. But I made a decision last week that we had to start getting some sleep. So we just started and Violet seems up for it. Since she is almost a toddler I was worried that firstly it would be harder and secondly there wouldn’t be as much advice.

In terms of the second point that is definitely true. But, it seems a lot of kids have a regression at 18 months, so I piggybacked on some of that guidance. I also used a nice note prepared by pampers. I am sure there are lots of very complex systems but this was what I found and it's done the trick (so far), If I knew anyone at Pampers I would send them a bottle of champagne.

So our strategy (maybe too grand a term)

• Started simply, by removing any telly after her dinner. We replaced it with reading books
• We have introduced a much more fixed timetable (dinner at the table at 5:30, bath at 6, in bed by 7)
• Around day 3 we shifted to the bedroom after her bath. We now spend 30 mins or so altogether reading on our bed
• Then the bit I was most worried about. We started leaving her in the room awake.   did this gently and explained what was happening. The first day I only left for 4 mins and then went back for 5.  On the second day stayed out for 5 and stayed for 2 mins. On the third day, she didn’t need me and went to sleep on her own. Not only was that great but it seemed to influence the rest of the night. She is now only waking around 3 or 4 times
• We have removed giving her milk when she goes to bed and massively reduced any feeds during the night.

So far it seems to be working. She is still struggling at the end of the night, around 5 am, and still wants to get up at 6 but it is so much better. The next targets are to remove any feeding through the night and then try and push the morning wake-up to around 7.  Fingers crossed

So hopefully that is a pretty positive post for the first in 2022. I will try and keep it up