My Experience with Sleep Training

Baby, Kids, Motherhood

March 4th, 2016

I want to start this off by saying that this post is not sponsored. I just felt the need to share something with other parents… we sleep trained our toddler and it worked!!

When I had my first child I went to a support group after about 2 months just to see what other moms were doing. I remember hearing this one mom say that her daughter was 9 months old and wasn’t sleeping through the night… I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – I had hope Nathan would sleep through the night after 1 month. I mean, my cousin did it so why couldn’t I do it? Little did I know that there are a lot of sleep deprived parents. I thought that sleep deprivation was only in the newborn phase lol.

Months went by and Nathan went through different phases, so I would just say “oh he’s teething” or “he’s going through a funny stage, he’ll sleep through the night soon”. I had the contented little baby book and followed it, during the day I was good… he was on a routine and went to bed no problem but would still get up in the night to have a bottle. Well, things took a turn at about 19 months when he wouldn’t go to sleep on his own at bedtime and he started getting up multiple times in the night but he didn’t want a bottle. We thought maybe he needed a big boy bed so we tried that out and it didn’t change. By about 21 months we were bringing him into our bed in the night, something I once said I would never do but hey, when it’s 3am and I have to work the next day and I’m pregnant, I’ll do whatever it takes. Then he started waking up in our bed… so I made the decision at 23 months that we would sleep train him, another thing I said I would never need to do.

I did some research online and contacted WeeSleep. I spoke to Janey Reilly, the founder of WeeSleep. After my consultation I was ready. I signed up for the Rescue Me (Virtual) and paid $425… let me tell you, that was the best money we have ever spent. We filled out the questionnaire, had a 2 hour phone consultation with Holly and then we got the program designed for our family. It was a strict program and it was for 14 days. I love that their approach is very gentle and supportive. When I was doing my research it seemed like sleep training was based mostly around letting them cry it out and that wasn’t for us. You can read more about their approach. We had telephone and email support throughout the whole thing. The first couple of nights were tough but I couldn’t believe how quickly it worked. The company has this on their website:

Matt and I actually laughed when we first saw that… but wouldn’t you know, Nathan slept through the night on day 10. I actually asked Janey if she did anything to him or if something was wrong haha… we just couldn’t believe that he slept through the night. It didn’t end there… he slept through the night every night until the new baby arrived, but even now it’s not nearly as bad and it’s sporadic. We actually put him in the crib fully awake and he falls asleep on his own. He used a soother before we started the program but we took it away on day 1 and never looked back.

I know this sounds like a sponsored post but it’s not… I haven’t spoken to Janey since last September. This is just a mom who wants to share her experience in case there is even just one other parent out there who is going through the same thing. Getting no sleep is not fun. I can’t believe we lasted that long. Looking back, I wish that we had called earlier. I really did feel like something would just ‘click’ – but it never did until the sleep training.