From sleepyland

As some of you may not Naomi is is nearing 7 months old and she still does not sleep through the night. So I’ve been doing “research” about how to help her do this so my husband and I can stop being daytime zombies. The number one method that I have found is best known as “crying it out.” As I've mention before but I am not a proponent of this method. I tried it for a week and honestly felt like it was a nightmare and that it made everything worse. I don't understand how crying yourself to sleep is equivalent to "soothing" yourself to sleep. Plus when Naomi gets upset and cries she scratches herself and further irritates her eczema (which is likely another source of her/our sleep woes.) So, I’m trying some other options first, but we may have to reluctantly retry the crying method.

So far, the most important thing I’ve found in my sleep research is babies need to go to bed early — 7 or 8 p.m., even as early as 6:30 p.m. This was such a surprise for me because we were putting Naomi in bed about 11 p.m. or midnight or even 1 a.m., right before we went to bed. I work pretty late on some nights and don't get to spend much time with Naomi, so it was nice to see her still hanging around when I got home.

Also, I guess the thought process was that the later she went to bed the later she would wake up. Not so says my research. We were more than likely making her overtired and too fussy to sleep. We’ve started putting her to bed earlier. The first night I saw some success. She briefly woke up at 11 p.m., but quickly returned to sleep. The other nights she sleeps until about 3 a.m., which if you count from 8 or 9 p.m. is six or seven straight hours, and acts like she doesn't want to return to sleep. I am hoping to weed this out, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

By the way, in reference to sleepyland, it seems I'm usually the sleepy one, not Naomi.