The seventeenth week

This week: The Experiment.

In recent weeks Madeline had a little difficulty getting to sleep in the evening. She often needed to be rocked and then would become restless and fussy when we put her down. So we decided to Ferberize her.

Named after Dr. Richard Ferber, the method consists of letting the child cry for lengthening periods of time to teach her to fall alseep on her own. At predetermined intervals, if the child is still crying, a parent calms and comforts her, but doesn't pick her up. On the first night the intervals are 3 minutes, 5 minutes and then every 10 minutes until she falls asleep. The second night is 5, 10 and 12. We didn't need to time the third night.

The first night was terrible. We felt like such horrible parents. As our baby wailed upstairs all we could do was sit on the couch, unable to concentrate on anything but the clock, counting down the minutes until we could visit Madeline and calm her. It was gut-wrenching, but we tried to tell ourselves that everyone was going to benefit from this (if it actually worked).

The second night was better, but still not great. She only cried half as long as the first night. But every other night has been a success - she has fallen asleep quickly and without lots of assistance from her parents. And as she's learned to sooth herself, she's also sleeping longer through the night - more than 8 hours straight in some cases.

Here's a rundown of the experiment this week:

Sunday: 38 minutes of crying, slept until 3:30 a.m. (the time she's been getting up for the past several weeks)

Monday: 18 minutes of crying, slept until 4 a.m.

Tuesday: no crying, slept until 6 a.m.

Wednesday: 5 minutes of crying, slept until 5:45 a.m.

Thursday: no crying, slept until 5:30 a.m.

The first days were hard on these new parents, but the payoff has been high. After a couple more weeks I think we'll be in a better position to determine if our experiment has worked.