Posted by tired on February 06, 2008 at 16:55:28:Hello.
I have a question about whether different techniques are ok to use for naps vs. nighttime sleep.
We recently used the Ferber method for our 5 month old. When he was about 4 months old he started getting up every 1 to 3 hours with various degrees of success at our getting him back to sleep. On the 2nd night of Ferber he slept straight through from 7pm to 5:30pm and has pretty much been doing this consistently for the past 2 weeks. We are obviously VERY happy with this relatively pain-free and quick result.
For naps we had been giving him the pacifier. This for the most part worked really well. He would often nap for at least 1.5 - 2 hours (although sometimes this was achieved by going in when he woke up grunting and putting the pacifier back in his mouth). And sometimes it would take 15 - 20 minutes of "replugging" the pacifier to get him to go to sleep in the first place (and sometimes he would fall asleep in under 5 minutes). But I felt like naps were going really well.
But after we used the Ferber method at night, this pacifier technique seemed so contradictory. Whereas at night we will let him fuss for a while, in the day I would immediately go in to give him the pacifier. So I have been trying to let him "cry it out" more during the day and so far (on day 5) we have only had a lot of crying, not a lot of napping, and only slight progress from the 1st day. So now I am wondering if we should just let him have the pacifier.
And my question is, "Is this confusing for him? Will he start to want the pacifier at night and 'forget' that he knows how to put himself back to sleep on his own?"
Sorry for the long-winded question, but I would appreciate people's thoughts and experiences with this.
thanks!
- Re: Naps vs. Nighttime enviromum 16:23 2/11/08 (0)