Crib Training at 10.5 Months

As you may have read in my last post, Penny has been sleeping in our bed almost exclusively for the last few months. We knew that we should get her into her crib sooner than later, as she is getting bigger and taking up more and more space in our bed. We wanted to start the transition at 9 months, but teething and a month of colds kept us holding off. So, this week, we finally lowered the crib and figured out our strange heating system to keep her room warm enough and gave it a shot!

Now, a little backstory on our previous bedtime "routine". Penny would hang with us until she seemed very tired, then we would go to bed and nurse until she fell asleep. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes, sometimes an hour. Then, as soon as I got out of bed, she would wake up and we would start all over. Usually she would get to sleep around 9:30-10. Now, after only 4 days (!!) we have a much more predictable bedtime.

The first night, I nursed her well and layed her into her crib (for the first time) around 7:30. I turned on her ocean wonders projector/music player so that I didn't just leave her in the dark alone. She cried hard for 10 minutes, then fussed for another 30 or so minutes until she fell asleep. She woke up and went back to sleep several times before ending up in our bed around 11.

Night two was much easier. Again, I nursed her, layed her down turned on her noise/light machine, and left the room. She fussed the whole time the machine was on, but literally as soon as it was off, she fell asleep. I nursed her again for comfort at 9:30, then rubbed her belly at 10:30 to get her back to sleep. She was in our bed around 1.

Day three was harder because we had a friend over. She didn't go down as easily, and I had to go in after 10 minutes to nurse her again. She was in our bed at 10:30.

Night four (last night) was the best so far. I did the nurse, lay down, machine routine at 7:30. I noticed that she was almost showing me she was ready for bed for the first time in her life. She stopped nursing and started to make the same fussing noise that she does while laying in her crib. She was asleep in 15 minutes. It was also the first time I was EVER able to leave during bedtime. I went out with a friend without having to worry about her needing to be nursed back down again! She slept, without waking up, until 1!

Overall, I am SO glad that we bit the bullet to sleep/crib train! I know that every family is different, and so is every baby. She gets more worked up when we go in to check on her, so we chose to use the extinction method (which is something I NEVER thought I would do). Did you sleep train? When did you baby first sleep in their crib?