Initial assessment.

If you remember 11 days ago I started using a book
by Elizabeth Pantley in hopes that my kiddo would learn to sleeo. Well. We’ve been “following” our plan for 10 days and last night we did another assessment to mark our progress. I’ll share that later in this post.

First. What I thought we did well/alright:

• Initiating a bedtime routine. Though the amount of time I took to perform the routine varied depending on how sleepy he was, the routine was the same all but 2 nights.
• Earlier bedtime (all but 2 nights)
• He slept in his crib some almost every night.

Factors effecting our success negatively:

• Teething. Yesterday he woke up in need of ice.
• Gas… We have drops we can give him and do give him as neccessary.
• Brain growth. He has been learning so many new things (crawling, consonants, talking, signing, waving hi, etc.) it may take a bit for his brain to wind down for rest.
• His naps have been more difficult and it is harder to get him to actually sleep without me holding or lying next to him.
• The weekdays this week were tougher than the first few and the last couple.

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Improvement as quantified per instructions in the book:

• number of naps: 3 (no improvement)
• lengths of naps: 60-80 min (improved from 10min-90 min. Not exactly sure if that’s an improvement, but they’re more regular lengths)
• time fell asleep: 8:15 PM (improved from 9 PM)
• time woke up: 7:20 AM (originally 8:05 AM)
• longest span of sleep: 2hrs (longest was 3.25 hours)
• average length of sleep span: 1hr 40min (improved from 1 hour)
• number of awakenings: 5…one of which I don’t even remember! (improved from 8!!)
• total hrs of night sleep: 9 3/4 (improved from 9 1/2) he should be getting 10-11 hrs at night.

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What we’re going to work on this time:

• Earlier bedtime. I want to aim for 7 or 7:30 most nights.
• More consistent nap times.
• Continue trying to get him to go to sleep in the crib at least a little.
• Make bedtime routine last at least half an hour. Having an earlier bedtime should make that easier.
• Actually try to change how I’m putting him back to sleep at night (this will take the most work).
• Try to be more consistent with bedtime and routines.
• Put him down for a nap AS SOON AS he’s sleepy.

So. As you can see there has been some improvement! He only (lol) woke up 5 times last night. :) it’s great. There is still plenty of room to improve in his sleeping patterns, but also n our routine and habits for getting him to sleep. So that is great as well!

I have much more hope coming out of this second assessment than I did going into it because we sid see some quantifiable improvement and there is still plenty of room for us to help him improve. So we will continue on this path and see how it goes!

I’ll have another update for you on October 3rd or 4th.