My Old Friend Ferber

The last time I blogged about sleep it was an issue of Alex not drinking enough to get him through the night.

Well I've since realized my supply is keeping his tummy full, we have taken a few courses of action, none of which have provided the end result we were hoping for.

What is that end result you may ask? I'm not looking for 8pm-8am sleeps here. Just the 5 hour blocks we were getting prior to the 3-month mark.

Our first attempt involved taking the pacifier out of Alex's mouth every time he fell asleep. So we'd let him suck to soothe and then remove it so he wasn't sucking in his sleep.

That didn't work.

Or maybe we just didn't give it enough time.

Then we tried the Ferber method. Night one was rough. Hearing him cry was heartbreaking. He made himself so hysterical that there was no way to soothe him: no cuddling, no rocking, no singing. The only thing that would work was putting the pacifier in for a second to get him back to composure and then remove it so he could try to fall asleep on his own, a bit more relaxed.

He was up about 4 times with crying spells lasting 30 minutes.

Night two. He cried for 45 painful minutes and fell asleep until about 3 am. And then after 30 minutes of crying and me surfing the net paranoid, came across a conversation about the Ferber method causing brain damage, so I quickly got up and put the pacifier in his mouth and officially gave up on Ferber.

The newest tactic deals not so much with sleep training but with slowly removing the pacifier as a crutch. I came across Bye Bye Binky, a method that supposedly has seen a ton of success. The concept? Make the sensation of sucking an unpleasant one. How do you do that? Well, the first step is to put 7 pin size holes in the head of the pacifier so more air is inside.

In two days, I will cut a small tip off of the nipple, then a bit more, and finally a vertical slit down the centre of the nipple.

Hmmm...after writing that I'm thinking that all this technique might accomplish is some profit accumulation for the pacifier industry. But at this point there's no harm in trying. But then again, if he refuses the pacifier he'll have to find another way to self soothe and that eventually might lead to the same kind of tears that Ferber created.

Oh the joys of sleep!