Last night was the third night we tried it.  The first night it was so late at night and he was so exhausted that he went to sleep after only three trips to bed (including the initial bedtime routine).  The second night I believe we put him back to bed five times.  Nap time yesterday was only two trips to bed.  Last night it was around five times, but there was a rogue factor in that I wasn't home the whole time and Colin was asleep in bed, having taken some Benadryl for a runny nose/sore throat.  I think we're doing great, especially since the examples in the book talk about being required to take 144 trips back to bed the first night.  So, I'm excited that he's doing so well and that it's so much easier than I expected.  If I have to take him back to bed three times every night for the next year, I think that's totally doable. 

I have to explain that Dr. W doesn't recommend letting all kids cry themselves to sleep.  In fact, his book is designed specifically to help you to not have to do that by not creating sleep problems in your baby.  We tried letting Degen cry himself to sleep once when he was about 3 months old.  We let him cry for exactly 38 minutes, as we hid in the bathroom and tried to ignore the sound coming through the walls.  He just got more and more angry and cried harder and harder.  So we gave up on that method of teaching him to sleep…until we read this book. 

Dr. W explains that you have a responsibility to teach your child to soothe himself to sleep.  When he has a sleep problem, there are a couple of ways to help him learn to soothe himself: one, to go "cold turkey" and ignore him till he goes to sleep, no matter how long it takes; or two, to do the gentler method of letting him cry for gradually longer periods of time and soothing him in between (five minutes of crying, go calm him down, six minutes, calm, seven minutes, calm, etc. until he goes to sleep).  Because Degen had already transitioned to a toddler bed and because I didn't believe in the sleep-deprived condition I was in that I could be perfectly consistent, we chose to go the cold turkey ignoring route.

The first time we tried it Degen cried for over two hours, screaming and banging on the door to his room.  The second time it was about and hour and a half.  A week later it was about half an hour.  Now, five months later it's usually zero to five minutes of crying, with an occasional bad night.  I told Colin tonight that it's still agonizing for me to leave him in his room and close the door at night when he's calling for me.  His response was that it's hard for him to, that we have no real assurance that it's not scarring him for life, but that we're doing our best.  Small comfort…

However, the benefits are immense, both to Degen and to us as parents.  When we started, Degen refused to take naps and regularly wouldn't go to sleep until 11pm or 1am, then would wake up around 3am and scream for an hour until we took him downstairs to watch TV until he fell asleep again around 4 or 4:30.  Then he would sleep until between 7am and 9am and repeat the cycle.  Poor Colin was sleeping with him on the couch practically every night.

Within a couple of weeks of reading this book, Degen was taking 1-2 hour naps every afternoon, going to sleep by 5:30pm and staying asleep in his room until 7am and sometimes later, with the occasional 5-minute wakeup cry in the middle of the night.  It's made a huge difference in his mood and his ability to get along and play with others.  Now that he's a little older and more well-rested, he goes to bed around 6-6:30pm, but he still takes his nap and he rarely wakes up at night.  And Colin and I get a normal amount of sleep and are much happier and better able to cope, too.

For Degen, I'm grateful for the benefits of this method of getting him to sleep, but still uncomfortable about letting him sit in his room in the dark by himself.  The next step is to teach him to stay in his bed at night and not come to the door…  I'm gearing up for the fight in the near future.  After that, we'll start putting Maggie in the crib in his room at night.

Besides the benefit to Degen, Healthy Sleep Habits has helped us prevent problems with Maggie!  We learned about normal sleep patterns, how to tell when a baby is sleepy and not yet overtired, what to expect, and how to help her learn to soothe herself in a normal way.  And it's working!  Maggie sleeps for 45 mins to 1 hour every 1 1/2 or 2 hours and sleeps through the night most nights now.  Sometimes we have to leave her in her bassinet for a little while, but I've never had to leave her there for more than 10 minutes before she went to sleep, and most often she just drifts off after a couple of whiny protest yells.  It's wonderful!  And it makes me feel good that we're sort of getting it right with our second kid.

So, hopefully we haven't scarred Degen for life.  In any case, I recommend this book to anyone who has a child (the book talks about how to deal with problems up to age 16) or who is expecting a child.  It's a real education on how sleep should happen, how it gets messed up, and how to fix it.  And for those of you with colicky babies: first, I'm so so so sorry, and second, this book might be a lifesaver for you since he spends much of the first chapters discussing that particular problem. 

Happy sleeping!