To sleep or not to sleep cont.

Night 5 - getting better, only about 5 minutes of crying and then fast asleep.

Night 6 - 3 minutes of crying and he's out. He falls asleep in really weird positions though; kneeling up against the side of the crib, lying with his face directly down into his blankets, curled in a ball, legs sticking out the side of the crib. I get scared that he'll stop breathing so i move him which sometimes wakes him up. But all in all this week has worked out pretty well. I promised myself that i'd try it for two weeks and if he wasn't falling asleep on his own by then i'd stop. But it looks like i dont even need another week. this is a little recap
night 1 - 45 minutes
night 2 - 3-4 minutes
night 3 - 10 minutes
night 4 - 35 minutes
night 5 - 5 minutes
night 6 - 3 minutes

So, a note to all parents of babies or future babies, here is my advice.

1 - from day one, NEVER EVER NEVER EVER ROCK YOUR BABY TO SLEEP!!! Once you start, they'll want it every single time and will learn that the only way they can go to sleep is be rocked, which is fine for the first couple of weeks or months when they're small and you just want to hold them all the time. But once they start getting older and you have things to do, you'll regret it. So don't start!!

2 - It is possible. Trust me, if this little boy can unlearn that he needs to be rocked, nursed and sung to sleep any baby can, you just need to stick with it. It seems like the crying will never end, but if you know they're feed, clean, warm, and safe, the crying is just them expressing their frustration and objection to what's going on. But they need to be taught to sleep and this is one sure way to do it.

Now that we have the going to bed thing under control, now all we need to do is eliminate the 2am waking and wanting to play. This will be a little harder coz when he wakes up he just stands up and see's us sleeping right next to him and cries and cries because he can see us. I'm thinking i'll need to rearrange our room and maybe put up some sort of screen around him so that when he wakes up in the night we can let him cry himself back to sleep. Watch this space for updates.