One of my best friends was over the other day with her baby girl. She is a few weeks younger than Elizabeth, and we love getting the girls together. They are going to be roomies in college :)
We were talking about getting babies to sleep. She said it took two nights of trying this one method with her daughter, and then she has been able to sleep through the night ever since.
I think there is a fine line between what is worth investing in your future with kids. Two nights of tough sleep is SO WORTH having a baby who sleeps through the night. It just takes time and you have to make a sacrifice to get there.
For Zach, he learned how to climb out of his crib so I had to come up with something. I thought of a crib tent, but then I came up with a plan. If he got out, he had to come lay in my bed with me, with my leg over him and he couldn't have his pacifier or blanket. He would cry for a couple of minutes when I did it, then I would put him back. We had to do it three times the first time, and then twice the second day. But then it worked! It was so worth spending an hour and a half using a plan rather than fighting to keep him in there every single day. The pacifier ended up being pretty easy to get rid of since he was older (2) when we got rid of it. He kept getting out of his bed and I told him we had to throw it away because he wasn't listening. He asked for it again, but I reminded him what we had to do. The End!
Things like letting him have a pacifier 'so' long was one of those things that wasn't worth the end result at the time. It kept him quiet, it calmed him down, it helped him when he was teething. It wasn't worth just being able to say that he was done with it. Especially since he only had it at night. But the timing was great when he was done.
I think the next big sacrifice thing for me will be toilet training. Elizabeth is doing pretty good at night again, so that has been a minor one. But toilet training...o boy. I have done it a little with him, so he is getting used to the idea but not super excited about it. I kind of wish we had a couple of days to fully focus on Zach and get this done!
