I finally gave up and decided that Liza was a bad sleeper. Not that she was a good sleeper and that we were in a bad patch, but that truly she was a poor sleeper and that chances are decent that it might not get a whole lot better. Not for a while anyway.

So just like my epiphany with Eli and pull up diapers, this realization has made my life a whole lot easier, if for no other reason than it takes the pressure off. We don’t have to get back to our right routine of sleeping; we have to make up a whole new one. So I’ve been doing some reading. I’ve been reading the same books as before but this time with an eye to what will work with my slightly separation-anxiety prone, highly dramatic girl child who doesn’t need as much sleep as Eli did.

One of the first things I read about children with separation anxiety is that when you leave them to cry it out it makes the separation anxiety worse. This seems like common sense advice now. But again, I kept thinking that it worked with Eli so if we only toughed it out a bit longer it would work. Three months later I am finally able to admit that it wasn’t working.

So what do you do with separation anxiety prone kids? The Baby Whisperer has a few things to say about that. Her big method for correcting sleep problems is something she calls “Pick Up/Put Down”. The gist of it: you stay in the room with the baby and pick her up when she’s crying. As soon as she is calm, immediately put her back down. Eventually she will fall asleep on her own. There are some finer points to it, but that’s the basics. Early this week I showed this chapter to Stephen and asked him if we could work on that this weekend. (The book recommends starting on the weekend so both parents are available to switch off as needed.) He said we could try it and see if it worked since we’d had such bad luck with other methods.

Right around the chapter on Pick up/Put down is a few pages on wake-to-sleep, which I talked about in a previous post. As we were sitting on our bed talking about our strategy, I was flipping over those pages and thought, “Why not try this? It’s the easiest thing ever and if it doesn’t work we can move on to the more labor-intensive Pick up/Put down.” Stephen and I talked about that and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hit the “one hour before” her regular wake up time. But the worst that could happen was that she would wake up and we’d have to get her back to sleep–but hey, that was going to happen anyway, so why not try it? Also, we were ready for something easy to try.

That was Monday night. I jostled her around 11. (She didn’t wake up, just sighed and turned her head to the other side.) She slept until around 6 am.

Tuesday night I jostled her around 11 and she woke up at 4:30 and was up for the day. Ugh!

On to Wednesday night, Stephen jostled her at 10:45 and I set my alarm for 3 and jostled her. She woke up at 5:30.

Last night, we jostled her around 11 and then at 3:30. She woke up at 5:45, talking instead of crying! At least three times last night she cried out but put herself back to sleep. I think. I hope.

Turns out the one hour before isn’t the magic part. The jostling that resets her clock is the complete and total trick of unbelievable magic.

So how long are we going to do this? Well, the book says three days to reset her habit and then one night to see if it works and if not, then another three days. I think with Miss Stubborn we’re just going for the six days before we test her new habits.

What have I learned from this? Liza is a very deep sleeper! Often when we go in to jostle her, we nearly have to pick her up to get her to stir. Setting my alarm for 3:30 am sounds like the crappiest thing ever, but I’m actually getting more sleep because it only takes about three minutes to do the jostle and then get back into bed. Never scoff at a technique because it seems completely counterintuitive; sometimes the craziest thing works.

Here’s hoping that she doesn’t have another cold this season to mess up her sleep and that easiest technique in the whole history of the world solves her sleep difficulties.