Since moving Colin into his big boy room, we've definitely allowed for the transition. Meaning, we were laying down with him every time he went to sleep in order for him to feel comfortable in his new space. At this point, he definitely feels at home in his room and the unexpected outcome of the transition was that he expected mommy or daddy to be next to him every time he woke up whatever time that might be. About two weeks ago, we realized that he was waking up 3-5 times a night with each time taking about 10 minutes to two hours to get him back to sleep. The next day everyone was miserable and cranky. After several days of back to back sleepless nights we decided to start sleep training.
For those unfamiliar with this concept, it's this awful process where you go through your normal sleep routine, tuck him into bed, give him lots of love, and then just walk out the door. Eventually he cries himself to sleep and he learns to go to sleep on his own. Anyone who has done this knows the torture of listening to your child scream and the constant repeating to yourself about the necessity of this process. It's just plain awful. But I have to say Colin has done great with it. The most he cried was about 10 minutes the first night and it's been progressively better every day. After about 12 days, he's down to just a whimper when I leave his room and he's sleeping through the night once again.
While I am not yet waving the victory flag, we sure are a lot more rested around here at a time where we all need every bit of sleep we can get!
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