Friday, April 10, 2009

Operation: Sleep Through the Night - Night 1

Now that we're back home we've decided that it's time for the baby to start sleeping through the night. Really though, it's time that I get more sleep. I haven't slept well since I was in the 2nd trimester. I can't take much more.

Mark has 3 days off this weekend so it was a good time to start working on her. We decided that once she was in bed, we weren't going to get her out and that we (I) would only feed her once overnight (after 1 am) no matter how many times she woke up.

Putting her down last night was the hardest. She usually goes down pretty easily, but not last night. It's like she knew what we were trying to do.

According to Dr. Ferber's book, we were supposed to go in briefly after 3, 5, and 10 minutes while she cried. It was difficult to hear her cry for that long but she only made it half way through the ten minute period so she only cried for 17 minutes or so. 17 minutes of Hell for Mark and I. It's so hard to hear her cry but we know it needs to be done. She needs to learn to put herself to sleep. I don't plan on nursing forever.

After she finally fell asleep the rest of the night went great. She didn't wake up until almost 2 so I fed her and she went right back down. Unfortunately she woke up at 5:40 this morning. Instead of trying to put her back down (like I normally would have) we all got up for the day. It's now almost 8 and she's already taking her first nap. I guess we'll work on that later...

Tonight will be a little harder, I imagine. The intervals get a little longer, but still doable. We'll also not be feeding her until 2:15 (I know she can go until 2 without starving).

Hopefully by this time next week she'll be sleeping through the night!

I can dream, right???

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