Ferber Anyone?

Since we are avid readers of all information related to baby sleep, we know that Ferberizing your baby means checking in on them at progressively longer intervals until they fall asleep. The verb Ferberizing is from the name Ferber...the doctor who first talked about this method. We don't do this because putting Thomas down and leaving him to eventually fall asleep has been working for us. He is still waking early, but going to sleep well most nights and staying asleep. Because we were feeling confident, he has decided to throw a few wrenches into the mix.

First, he is taking FOREVER to go to sleep for naps and is waking up at least once during both of them. Second, he will let me feed him breakfast, but is refusing to eat lunch or dinner if I feed him. He will only eat what he can feed himself. He's eating a lot of little crackers these days after I force a few bites of other things into his mouth.

So back to Ferber. Today was the day to tackle naps with a modified Ferber. I got him drowsy, put him in the crib and silently pronounced, "Let the screaming commence!" It did. For the next hour I went in every 15 minutes for one minute of soothing and then left again. He finally fell asleep and stayed asleep for the whole nap. I did the same thing for nap #2. I had to go in one time and he took only about 20 minutes total to fall asleep. He had a great nap that he slept through entirely. We decided that to be consistent we would go in every 15 minutes at bedtime as well. Hmmm...there was only squirming and changing positions for a while, but no crying and so no parental visits! Whew- wish me luck tomorrow.

The food thing is what it is. We're not worried about his size! He'll eat cheese and Cheerios and crackers until he won't :-) Note the messy bib- it's hard to force a baby to eat. I got a lot in him, a lot on him and then let him have some crackers.


This is where I found him earlier today