Chronicles of Baby Bootcamp

For any of you that aren't quite sure what Baby Boot Camp is, I'll try to explain. I'm sure you have all know that when someone joins the military they first go away to basic training, which is often called boot camp. Well just as the military using basic training/boot camp to train the soldiers, moms can use baby boot camp to train their baby. It's called boot camp because it's not a pleasant experience from mother or baby and is a pretty touch regimen.

I wanted to use baby boot camp to accomplish three goals:

1. Teach Y to fall asleep unassisted. We stopped rocking her to sleep long ago but we still remained in the room until she fell asleep, I wanted to end this dependency.
2. Teach Y to sleep through the night, or at least not wake up screaming in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.
3. Extend Y's nap time, her naps would only last about 30 minutes and she would wake up still being sleepy.

The three goals often go hand-in-hand and if you fix one then it is said that the other two will fix themselves...this was not the case for us at all!

We started Baby Boot Camp as soon as we returned from celebrating Christmas in Canada. That was two weeks ago, we started at nap time on Tues., Dec. 29th. Nap time didn't go so well at all, she only cried for about 10 minutes but she only slept for 15 minutes before waking up and screaming her head off. We surrendered and I decided to give it another try at bedtime. So when it was time for bed, I gave her her milk and she sat with B while I read her a bedtime story. We then put her in bed, she cried for 5 minutes after which I went in to check on her briefly. When I left she screamed even louder - fortunately I had my iPod touch to keep me distracted and I surfed the internet. After another 15 minutes I went in again, calmed her down and left. She continued to cry for another 10 minutes and then she was asleep - 30 minutes for the first night wasn't bad at all!!! I felt confident that this was going to be easy. but received a reality check when she woke several times that night. I started out just letting her cry but I was pretty weak and gave in. The next day nap time was fairly easy, she only cried for 5 minutes and only 15 minutes at bedtime. Over the next few days nap time became a breeze with bedtime becoming fairly easy as well. But the night waking was still an issue, and I mean a HUGE issue. She would wake at night screaming for hours at a time until I cracked. Meanwhile, B and I were having some disagreements on the whole baby boot camp thing. I felt it was a necessary evil for my own sleep needs and sanity. He felt it was cruel and we were punishing her when she had in fact done nothing wrong.

At this point I felt we have successfully accomplished goal #1 but the night wakings were getting more and more challenging and the nap was still only at 30 minutes. I was seriously at my wits end but the progress with goal #1 is honestly what made me stick with it. So now after two full weeks of boot camp Y is able to soothe herself to sleep and at least for the past couple of nights she has slept through the night until 8am! I have definitely enjoyed having the nights of uninterrupted sleep! I still don't wanna say that goal #2 is completely accomplished until she has done it for at least a week or more and goal #3 isn't even close to being resolved. I now put her down for 2 afternoon naps so she is at least getting an hour of nap time each day - still not where I want her to be but we're taking baby steps I guess.

Overall I have to say that though there were so many times when I just wanted to call it quits I am so glad that I stuck it out and stayed with it. I am much happier and so is Y! I think B is just happier now that she doesn't seem to cry herself to sleep or wake up crying.