Red Light, Green Light

At 15 months, my beautiful boy still wasn't sleeping through the night. A typical night would consist of me or Tieba lying on the ground next to his crib until he fell asleep (a mighty leap from needing to be nursed or rocked to sleep), sneaking out of the room around 8:45 pm, and then returning to his room between 3 or 4 am to help him fall back asleep after he woke up in complete hysterics.  It should be noted that it wasn't unusual for him to also wake up at 12 or 1 am and then again at his 3 or 4 time.  Needless to say, I was about to lose it! 

Every time I would hear about a newborn baby that had better sleep habits then Ezra, I did all I could to not cry. When I went to his 15 month well child visit, I was desperate. Our usual pediatrician was out on maternity leave, so instead we saw her husband (pretty fun). When I told him about our situation, he told me what I already knew- I just had to let him cry it out. Coupled with his extremely strong will and separation anxiety I dreaded doing that (again). In addition to crying it out, he suggested that we purchase a stop light alarm clock. At bed time it is a red light and when it is time to wake up it turns to a green light.

I had heard of this for older children, but couldn't fathom is working for a baby that wasn't even a year and a half yet. He reminded us that kids understand a lot more than we think they can and urged us to give it a try. Feeling desperate, I went home and immediately ordered the $40 clock. Once the clock arrived we spent time explaining the process to Ezra and would do little role plays with it. We set the alarm for 6:00 am. The first night he woke up promptly at 4:00 am and was standing up screaming until we went in the room at 6. It was the longest 2 hours of my life. As soon as the green light came on Tieba and I bursted in the room full of excitement and praise for staying in his crib all night long!  The second night he slept until 5 am and cried intermittently for an hour until we came in to do our green light dance. By the third night, our little champion happily stayed in bed until 6:00 am, at which point he stood up and started calling out for me. It was so insane to watch him on the monitor looking at the green light and waiting for his go ahead to wake up. We were beyond proud and in disbelief that it actually worked! We slowly crept the wake up time to 7:00 and began to feel more and more sane.  Unfortunately my sleeping habits were so disturbed by his crazy patterns that I was still waking up every morning around 3 or 4 and taking way too long to fall back asleep... 
The little dog still heavily relied on me for naps and wanted most of those naps to be in our bed...

....
6 months later.... He sleeps through the night 3 out of 7 days of the week.  The alarm clock works but I'm not always good about being the enforcer. He stays in his room until the green light goes on... but that means that T or I are lying on the ground next to him for more hours each night than I want to admit. I still go crazy about his sleep patterns and am constantly reminding myself that he won't be this way forever. Right?

M