The past few months Ethan has woken up almost every night once or twice. I would get up and rock him back to sleep and put him back in his crib. Ever since he was a baby I haven't slept many consecutive hours even if he did. He started to sleep through the night at 4 months, but from then to his 10th month I woke up every night at 3am to pump so to keep my milk supply up. It wasn't until a few days before his first birthday that it started getting really bad!! He would wake up every two hours screaming at the top of his lungs. I panicked thinking that I would never sleep again until his 18th birthday and even then there was no guarantees. Reading multitudes of parenting books and articles about the sleeplessness of babies still did not help me feel comfortable with the idea of letting E cry it out. I tried the tips in the no cry solution, putting him down in the crib when he was sleepy not sleeping, using key words to signal sleepy time, earlier bed times, different napping routines, none of it really helped. Dealing with extreme sleep deprivation one particularly bad night we finally gave into the idea. He cried it out two nights and learned how to put himself back to sleep. I was so proud to see him get up to cry a bit last night then after standing around for a minute he plopped himself back down in bed and went back to sleep. He doesn't wake up nearly as much and puts himself back to sleep promptly. He only cries for a few seconds now before realizing its time to go back to bed!! THANK GOD!! Now if I could just stop waking up out of habit....
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