"This to shall pass... " or "Grab the Bull by the Horns..."

...currently that is our dilemma. Our little man continues to fight sleep like a rock star. I have read an infinite amount of books, blogs and articles on how to address these sleep issues.

The Problem:
1. Will will only take 45 minutes naps where he wakes up in his crib crying unable to put himself back to sleep. We then move him to his swing to finish out the remainder of his nap.
2. He continues to wake up once during the middle of the night at various times unable to put himself back to sleep. We know he doesn't need the additional feeding because once we put the paci in he usually goes back to sleep for several more hours.

Possible Solutions:
All the sleep training articles I have read say that almost any of the methods will work as long as they are consistently carried out and the parents are willing to stay the course.

#1 The first option is to utilize the Pick Up, Put Down Method from the author of "The Baby Whisperer" where when the baby wakes up and begins to cry the parent comes in the room and places a hand on the baby and reassures the baby that they are ok but need to go back to sleep. At which point the child will likely begin to cry harder. The parent then picks up the child, but the moment the crying stops they are to be placed back in the crib. This may have to be repeated for up to 100 times until the child finally nods back off to sleep without any sleep prop such as a paci. This method allows the child to cry, but not alone and only for a moment.

#2 The second option is to "Ferberize". The Ferber method is a variation of the "Cry it Out" in that you start off by allowing the child to cry for 3 minutes before going in and calming the child (without picking them up or giving them a paci) then waiting 5 minutes, then 10 up to 15 minutes. This approach is also known as the progressive waiting approach.... It is suppose to be for the more resilient, stubborn children such as ours :).

#3 The last option is to continue to wait it out and hope that things resolve themselves. I can see that happening for the nighttime as he is going til 5:30 or 6am several nights a week before waking up with the occasional 3am greeting. But the 45 minute nap intruder does not appear to be correcting itself any time soon and will likely need to be addressed head on.

....much to pray about. Either way, the plan is to tackle naps starting Monday and the nights next weekend! I should certainly have plenty of excitement to blog about this week ....

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