Two weeks ago, Sean stood up and walked, while holding onto the sofa. He plodded along, grabbed onto the window sill, and then proceeded to walk along the whole length of the window.
I can’t believe how quickly time flies. Wasn’t this guy doing his swimming-turtle impersonations a couple of weeks ago??
Sean wakes up at 6am. At 8am he’ll nap for an hour. Then at 1pm he’ll nap for 2 hours (same time as Callum my 2.5yo). He’ll eventually go down at 7pm. Sleep. Wake up for a bottle at 11pm. And sleep through till morning.
We’re trying to get him out of the 11pm bottle feed. So that he sleeps through the night, ie. from 7pm – 7am.
How we’ve done it in the past, is to use controlled crying. Basically it’s a technique that teaches the kid to put himself to sleep – by letting him cry it out, while checking on him every 10 – 30 minutes.
I’ve heard so many people say all kind of things about this method – that kids will grow up with a low self-esteem, poor attachment issues, feeling rejected by their parents. But I’ve heard lots of really good things and success stories too. I believe as a parent, you should just go with what you feel is right, keep an open mind to new ideas, and be aware that all kids are different – if it doesn’t work for your kid, then move on!
We first heard of the controlled crying technique when Callum was 9 months (and still waking up 3 times a night). We decided to try it, and we had to let him cry for 1 HOUR (with a couple of checks) before he finally went to sleep by himself.
I remember it was 4am, Andrew and I were in the next room, completely shattered and wrecked with grief and guilt. We felt like we were starving him. We thought that he was going to grow up with mental problems. We felt like SUCH bad parents. But he took to it well, and was immediately sleeping through the whole night from then on.
I haven’t pushed it that hard with Sean, because he’s been such a good sleeper from birth. And I noticed that on the occasion he does sleep through without a feed in the night, he wakes up SO FRANTICALLY HUNGRY AND HYSTERICALLY NEEDING MILK NOW DAMN IT! Which puts him off his breakfast, and makes the rest of his meal times out of whack with the rest of us. Haha, it’s true – the second child just has to fit in with our already established routine.