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Lloyd is now a big boy who naps and sleeps at night in his very own crib in his very own room.

Here is a picture of him from his first night.   He slept sitting up with his head against the bars for a couple hours.

To read about our sleep-training adventures, click “Read More”:

We were unexpected co-sleepers fairly early on, as most everyone knows.  Lloyd has always been very stubborn about sleep, and we have always been very emotional about his crying, so “Ferberizing” the little guy was never an option.   Plus, the agreement we made with Lloyd about co-sleeping was that we were willing to participate as long as he was willing to sleep peacefully.   For a long time this worked out great.  He’d wake up a couple of times a night, but only for about 60 seconds.    It made night-time nursing super easy, too!

However, about a month ago he started telling us that it was time to change.  He was waking up about 10 times a night, sometimes more.  He seemed like he couldn’t get comfortable.  We tried putting him down in the playpen in our bedroom, and that was a non-option in Lloyd’s book.

A friend and fellow co-sleeping Mom of a baby just about Lloyd’s age introduced me to a book by Kim West called Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady’s Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep , Stay Asleep, And Wake Up Happy!  She had used West’s method of transitioning her daughter from the family bed into her crib with great success and few tears.  And the method is indeed gentle, never telling the parents that the right thing to do is to shut your kid alone in their room in their crib and have them cry-it-out.   Which is good, because Greg and I aren’t up for that.

Greg was planning on taking a week-off from work anyway, so he decided he’d use his vacation to sacrifice his sleep and use the “Sleep Lady Shuffle” method from Kim West’s book and teach Lloyd how to fall asleep on his own.

We were really scared because this was going to be a huge transition for Lloyd.  Not only was he out of the family bed and into his own crib, alone in his own room, but he was also going to be night-weaned, and we were also going to do the nap-training on top of the sleep-training!  Whew!   And Lloyd can CRY.  We were realistically expecting him to cry for somewhere around 3 hours the first night, even though the book said they’d never seen a baby cry over 90 minutes before conking out.

On the first night, we set Lloyd down into his crib after our bedtime routine and Greg sat in his chair right next to the crib.  Lloyd cried for 35 minutes with Greg right beside him, talking to him, singing, and occasionally patting his back.   35 MINUTES!  We never expected it’d be that fast.  Lloyd proceeded to wake up about three times that night, but already this was a crazy improvement.  Greg went into Lloyd’s room every time he woke and he never cried for more than 5 minutes.  He did sit in his crib and stare at Greg for a while, which was creepy.

The second night Lloyd only cried for 20 minutes, and the third night only for 2 MINUTES!  Are you serious?!  We were stunned!  And that’s pretty much where we are now, about 10 days after we started the training.  Lloyd barely cries when we put him down for bedtime, Greg stays until he conks out (about ten minutes – 20 minutes later), and he wakes up usually only ONCE a night!  This is a crazy life-change, and it’s great knowing that Lloyd (let alone everyone else) is getting so much more sleep.

As for naps, he struggles a bit harder, but it’s working out.   I set Lloyd down in his crib and he’ll cry longer than he does at night-time.  About 20 minutes. Then he’s out.  In the morning we only let him sleep for an hour so he’ll take a nice afternoon nap.  In the afternoon he’s out for about 90 minutes.

So far so good!