We started this yesterday. What do I mean by enhanced?

As you know, we sleep trained Yusuf after he turned 6 months for a few specific reasons (you can read it here!). In this sleep training, we do wake him up briefly before midnight as we are about to head to bed ourselves – to give him another bottle of milk and change his diaper during this wake time too. He used to also wake up either around 3am or 5am for another round of milk. Very predictable.

In the last month or so, he did still wake up at around 3am or 5 am, but less frequent and most times, I (in this case it’s I, coz Yusuf just gets very clingy when he wakes up at night and only wants me. I wonder though why his first few words is ABAH and not MOMMY) can pat him back to sleep without giving him milk. There are of course nights when I become a Mom-zilla and would ask him “why do you wanna play at this hour Yusuf?! Just wait 3 more hours”

So yesterday, we decided to stretch this sleep training thing a little bit more coz we wanted to see if there is a potential for us to get uninterrupted sleep at night. What did we do differently? We did not wake him up when we headed to bed. We just went straight to bed without bothering him at all. We wanted to see if anything significant happens, like:
– Is he able to sleep through the night without having his midnight dreamfeed?
– Will he wake up in the middle of the night feeling extremely upset and hungry? Or hangry?
– Will his diaper leak if he sleeps through 11-12 hours without a diaper change?

First night last night and this was what we experienced
Is he able to sleep through the night without having his midnight dreamfeed?
– Yes and No. He woke up at 1.25am, calling out for me and wanted me to pick him up. However, he did not ask for milk, but instead just wanted to continue sleeping on my chest and then went back to sleep

Will he wake up in the middle of the night feeling extremely upset and hungry? Or hangry?
– Definitely was not hungry and angry, but he did cry out to be picked up out of the cot and just wanted to sleep close to us. And at that time, I also did not head out to automatically make him milk coz I wanted to see if he was gonna cry or was he gonna continue sleeping. He wanted to continue sleeping

Will his diaper leak if he sleeps through 11-12 hours without a diaper change?
– No, it did not! Woooot!! Was it full though when he woke up at 7am? Yes. It was and I had to change him immediately. However, he was not upset nor bothered about the full diaper. So in this department I’ve got to manage and monitor at night

Most importantly though, apart from the brief wake time at 1.25am, he actually slept through from 8pm till 7am! Not too bad at all for first try. Considering the night before he had woken up at 5am and started opening up all the blackout curtains and trying to get us all to wake up and play with him…..he did make me become Mom-zilla then.

Night 2 tonight, let’s see what happens tonight! 😁