Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

Well after such a long break, it seems best to return to the most recent topic. Sleeping. Ah, dear to my heart indeed!

We have had success here - Lily is now sleeping through the night from around 7.30 pm till 6.30 am, with a feed at 10.30 pm and a brief wake up around 5 am where I resettle her. The wake up is due to her new skill of crawling - she prefers to sleep on her tummy now but when she wakes in the early hours of the morning to find herself on her tummy, she forgets that she can get back to her back by herself. So in I trek, flip her back and off to sleep she goes.

Every now and then she doesn't wake at 5, and that means a longer stretch for me - bliss! Of course it took ages for me to sleep through - i keep waking, expecting her to wake and would lie there trying to hear her. That has stopped now, thankfully.

The key for us was getting to the end of a tether! After trying to settle her for 45 minutes at 1 am one night, I decided I had enough! So I put her into bed and left her to it, popping back in every 5 to 10 minutes to put her back on her back and giving her a pat. Within 30 minutes she was down to intermittent grizzling, then by 40 minutes she was asleep! Less time than I had just spent rocking her!

So further to my post on doing what is right for you, I really want people to know that you will probably know when you can change things without getting upset.

Trying to settle Lily this way any earlier would have been too traumatic for us all and would have failed. But this was the right time - and I just knew. Night 2 she resettled in about 10 minutes, night 3 it was about 5 - and now she goes off to sleep each night happy, even on those nights you would swear she was wide awake!

We do still have to pop her on her back at times, but as she gets better with crawling, she learns how to do this herself.

I know the reason this was so successful was the nights spent stretching her out beforehand (as discussed in the previous entry), so it wasn't too much of a shock to the system.

Of course now I actually sometimes miss those snuggly middle of the night feeds where you feel like the only 2 people alive. You can't win really, can you!