We had began sleep training Cam during our Boston trip in September, and we saw immediate results with Cam sleeping for 5 hours at a time.  In the wake of that bout of sleep training, I wrote "hopefully by Sunday he'll be sleeping through the night."  Well it turned out that by that Sunday Cam started to suffer from asthmatic symptoms: he was wheezing and had trouble breathing, even during his sleep.  You don't mess around with breathing difficulties so as soon as he started to cry at night we would comfort him to ensure he would be calm and breathe as easily as possible.  He was diagnosed with situational asthma and we had to treat him with an asthma puffer twice a day.  I'm pretty sure these asthmatic symptoms were caused by vacuuming of our wool rugs that I did upon returning from Boston - a LOT of little wool hairs were kicked into the air from the vacuuming and I'm sure Cam's little lungs were hit hard from breathing all that in.  Thankfully Cam's respiratory problems cleared up after a week of inhaler use and there are no lingering effects.  We gave Cam another week of through-the-night TLC and then started up sleep training again.

We had attempted to sleep train Cam in the past, efforts that did not last more than a couple days.  This time we were determined to stick it out and we even took the measure of sleeping in the guest bed downstairs while Cam slept in his crib upstairs.

The first night of sleep training, Sunday October 12, he went to sleep at 8:10pm.  As is usual for him, he woke up a couple hours later and started crying at 10:15pm.  We let him cry... and cry... and cry...  He ended up crying for an hour and ten minutes before falling back asleep at 11:25pm.  He awoke exactly one hour later at 12:25 but this time he only cried for ten minutes before falling back asleep, then slept for a four hour stretch before waking at 4:30am.  Again he cried for ten minutes before falling back asleep, and then woke up two hours later at 6:20am when we started our day.

So on the first night Cam had a two hour sleep, 1:10 cry, one hour sleep, ten min cry, four hour sleep, ten min cry, and two hour sleep.  It was very rough to let the little guy cry for an hour and ten minutes, but I felt better once he had the four hour sleep session.  I expected him to be very clingy and needy the next morning after abandoning him through the night, but he didn't seem to be any different in the morning, and that helped us feel better about the sleep training.

The next night we put him to sleep at 7:50pm.  His first cry was an hour and a half later at 9:30pm, but he went back to sleep after only five minutes of crying!  (I actually used three exclamation marks in my sleep log).  He awoke two hours later at 11:27, but this time he went back to sleep after only two minutes of crying!!!  (and this time I used "?!?!?!!" in my sleep log).  He only slept for half an hour this time, waking up at midnight and crying for six minutes.  Three minutes later he made a peep - a very short single cry with no other follow up cries or even sounds of movement.  Fourty minutes later he had another peep, then woke up another fourty minutes later but this time cried for five minutes before sleeping for good at 1:45am.  He didn't wake again til 6:45am - we were actually able to do our morning routines for twenty minutes before Cam woke up.

So the second night featured short sleeps and short cries followed by lengthy five hour sleep.  The very short crying periods were so nice to hear after the hour-plus of crying on the first night.  And the five hour sleep matched the longest-ever sleep he's had, so we were happy to be making progress after just two nights.

On the third night Cam was asleep by 7:40pm and woke up three hours later.  This was the longest initial sleep period Cam's had - usually he wakes up after an hour, at most two, after falling asleep.  I actually think he would have slept even longer - Sara had to go upstairs to get something and he woke up and started to cry only once she was near him.  Sara soothed him and he fell back asleep ten minutes after waking up.  An hour and a half later, he made some sounds for about five minutes.  He wasn't crying and the sounds weren't loud; he was just moving around and his breathing pattern altered and it sounded like he was about to wake up but never did.  Two hours later he had one loud cry before falling back asleep.  Just one cry!  After that, he did not wake til 6:45am and started off our day.

So the third night had Cam sleeping longer than ever right off the bat followed by a short ten minute wakeful period, then had a single cry before waking up the next morning.  So from 10:40pm til 6:45am, he had but one single solitary cry and probably wasn't even awake for that cry.  That makes it eight hours of sleep with but a single, solitary cry!  Eight hours and Cam didn't wake up!!!  Cue the angelic choir: Hallelujah!!!!!!! 

It only took three nights to get Cam to sleep through the night.  I would never have believed it.  Actually, perhaps I shouldn't say that he's sleeping through the night - he does cry out once or twice through the night, but they are the single cries during which I doubt he's awake.  If he is still waking in the night, he is able to fall back asleep on his own quickly and easily, which is really the whole point of the sleep training.