No Sleep Training

The only learning that's going on during Riley's sleep training is the rest of us are learning to live without sleep.

It all started off well and good a little over a week ago when we began with the only goal of putting Riley down to bed awake, but drowsy. We established a new bedtime routine, complete with music and books, and then down he goes. Most nights, he falls asleep with minimal crying. However, while he used to sleep quietly for several hours when we put him down dead asleep, he has some periodic crying spurts until he gets his dream feed before I go to sleep - usually around 10 p.m.

So, with that hurdle crossed, we moved on a few days ago to working toward getting him to sleep eight hours before eating again.

As he's done for months, Riley does great - for about six hours. Then, when his little internal alarm clock goes on at 4:11 a.m. (I'm not kidding - almost that exact time every morning), he cries. What follows is somtimes OK, with just a few minutes of crying here and there for the next couple of hours. But some mornings, like this one, I end up giving in and feeding him after 7 1/2 hours, unable - no, unwilling - to listen to more of his pathetic wailing knowing that I'll be able to feed him only 30 minutes later. What we probably should do is just let him cry himself to sleep at that point, but it's really hard.

This may all backfire. But we're exhausted. The hardest part about it is that the crying comes so close to when Holden's own internal alarm clock sounds - usually around 5:40 a.m. Any noise in the house around that time, from an unwitting sneeze to the cat creeping by his door and creaking the hardwood floor, can wake Holden. Once Holden's up, might as well throw in the towel, cause we're all up.

Amazingly, though, Holden hasn't had any reactions to Riley's cries in the dark. If he wakes up, he doesn't say anything.

But now I'm getting nervous. I (theoretically) return to work in three weeks and, if you could see how many times I've had to hit the delete button while typing this, you'd know I'm in no shape to make it through an entire day of thinking.