Sleep Training our 11 Month Old Daughter – Update #3 (Nights 6, 7)

This is the third post on sleep training, covering nights 6 and 7. These past two days/nights weren’t quite what we expected, and not in a good way.

If you missed the first two posts, you can read them here:
Sleep Training our 11 Month Old Daughter – Update #3 (Nights 1, 2, 3)
Sleep Training our 11 Month Old Daughter – Update #2 (Nights 4, 5)

And here’s brief recap of nights 1-5:

Night 1: Started late around 11:30pm. TIME TO SLEEP: 30 minutes. Slept til around 7am.

Night 2: Started around 9:40pm. TIME TO SLEEP: 50 minutes. Woke up at 3:45am, took another 50 minutes to sleep again. Got up at 7:30am.

Night 3: Started around 7pm. TIME TO SLEEP: 22 minutes. Woke up at 5:30am, fell back asleep in 10 minutes. Got up at 7:30am.

Night 4: Started at 7:42pm. TIME TO SLEEP: 11 minutes. Woke up at 11:22pm and didn’t fall asleep for another 30 minutes. Woke up again at 2:29am. Kept crying so changed diaper. Lucky I did, because there was poop. Took 38 minutes to fall back asleep, but just 4 minutes after diaper change. Woke up at 7:30am.

Night 5: Started around 7:25pm. TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 23 minutes. Slept through night. Woke up around 7am. Picked her up at 7:20am.

Night 6: I was at school, so my wife had to put her down. She went down around 8:06pm, and it looks like she fell asleep around 8:35pm (from Nest Cam). TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 29 minutes. She woke up around 6:48am, and I picked her up at 6:52am.

Night 7: During Day 7, we had a very hard time trying to get her to do her second nap. She wouldn’t sleep on her own, so we eventually just skipped it. We put her down at 8:04pm, and she fell asleep by 8:16pm. TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 12 minutes. I should note that she is still crying and sometimes screaming in the crib before she falls asleep, but she does seem to lay down a lot faster than she did before. She woke up at 5:36am and kept crying. I quickly changed her diaper and put her back in, but she kept crying. I checked her diaper again after about 20 minutes, but she hadn’t pooped. After 40 minutes, we gave up and took her out at 6:16am, and she’s been up since.

These past two days and nights have been rough. One thing I don’t hear much about or haven’t read much about is what happens during the day. It’s HARD to get her to nap now, and her naps are shorter. I’m not sure if she’s napping less because she’s getting more sleep at night or it’s just because she’s getting older. From what I’ve heard from others, she should have stopped crying herself to sleep at night by now, but I guess every baby is different. We also started a lot later than most, so that may be why it’s a little harder.

It’s starting to feel like we’ve been at this for a really long time now that we’ve hit a week. We see improvement in some areas (longer stretches of nighttime sleep and laying down on her own) but aren’t so sure about other areas (going down for nap, nap length, and still crying herself to sleep).

When I started, I had hoped by this time I would be writing a post about how we had succeeded in sleep training our daughter, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet or if we’ll ever be there. We have family staying over this weekend. I hope we can still do this.