the road to change sleeping positions

Around the end of four real months both of my girls learned how to roll over from their belly's to their backs. Since they are belly sleepers this created a nightmare for bed/naptime. We have spent the past month and a half running back and forth to their room to constantly flip them back over so they can sleep as they are screaming. this was going on repeatedly throughout the night and I was getting even more sleep deprived. After talking and reading whatever I could on the subject, we decided to Ignore and Teach. Let them cry till they fell asleep on their backs. I didn't have much choice, we've always gone the Cry It Out way but more Check and Console mixed in. We do 10 minute intervals depending on the severity of the screaming. If its a certain cry or sounds different I check more frequently. It had always worked for us, bedtime was a breeze after 12 weeks, they slept through the night and naptimes were relatively often and easy.

Three nights ago we decided to try simple Ignore at night. The first night Mallory played for almost two hours and cried for 10 minutes, my husband forgot about the Ignore part and went and rolled her over. The second we completely let them be, Mallory again played for two hours starting at 3am and then cried for 25 minutes at 5am before falling asleep. Only to then wake up for the day at 6am.

What then proceeded was the worst day in the past six months. They cried, I cried, but in the end I think mission accomplished. By noon, we'd already had three naps and three bottles (which is absolutely not normal) and they had cried for 25 minutes each time before falling asleep on their backs. They rolled themselves that way, I put them down on their bellies. And the day went on like that, although I will say each time the crying got a little bit less. By the time bedtime came, M went down without a peep and Emily let out a few little yelps after rolling to her back and went to sleep.

And not a cry out of them all night. I heard Emily playing for about 20 minutes around 3am and then she went to sleep without a single yelp. I couldn't believe it.

However they've decided to punish me back by saying Ha, I will then just sleep with my blanket over my face (the knit blanket I through on their legs after they fell asleep to keep them relatively warm without waking them up to get the other one out of their hands.