Katie D.
Sleeping through the night in 11 days!!
We started the steps of the Batelle program on 3/14/23 and by 3/25/23 our son was sleeping through the night!! Our son turned 2 on 3/16 (a couple days into the program) and I feel he excelled in the program because he is old enough to understand the tools used and how we are communicating. But also young enough that he is not trying to push boundaries with us yet. For example, after a couple days he started pointing to the monitor in his room and saying “see you” and would also point to the light and say “green time! Book?” He now gets excited for green time (bed time) and for the most part has no problem laying down to go to sleep on his own when green time is over and the light turns red. He had a ton of anxiety prior to sleep school and woke up several times per night in full blown tantrums. He had been in a “big boy” bed for a couple months so during wakes he would run into our room (first wake was around 11 pm) and we’d either have to let him sleep in our bed with us or take him back to his bed and lay there with him until he fell asleep again. He’d wake up again at 1, 3, and 5. We’d either be dealing with hysterical crying again if we went back to our bed after he fell asleep, or if we stayed with him he would basically have to sleep on top of us and be touching our faces to feel secure. It was awful and none of us were getting the sleep we needed. When we started Batelle we elected to use a baby gate on his room instead of the hug sleep sack that others have mentioned here. Once the kiddos turn 2 this is a good option to set the boundary, and basically his whole room became his bed. There were definitely some rough nights with him getting used to the gate and not being able to run into our room, but eventually we were able to calm him just through responding on the monitor, and now he has no wake ups at all! He now sees the gate as something that helps to keep him safe. The hardest part for us were the check-ins and getting him comfortable without us being in site. It was really hard for him because of his extreme separation anxiety. One thing that helped us was getting a stuffed Elmo that reads nursery rhymes. We would ask Elmo to read us a story over the monitor and watch / listen from a different room so that our son could become comfortable with knowing we could always see / hear him over the monitor if he was having a hard time, and that he was safe. We are so thankful for the Batelle program and the support we received from the team. We are all in better moods and feeling healthier now!