Nighttime sleep

Before we changed the rules on Sophia and started sending her to bed at eight at night, I would nurse her when she became hungry at around nine. Then I sit there holding and rocking her until she was in a deep enough sleep that her body was limp and I could tip toe to her crib gently setting her down usually at ten but sometimes at eleven/midnight/or the always lovely two in the morning. Now I can reliably go upstairs do our half-hour routine and set her in her crib half awake without doing specially choreographed dancing around eggshells type of maneuvers. Sometimes she falls asleep right away and other times we’ll hear, “ah-heh ah-heh” for a few minutes before she’s out.

From birth she’s been really good about sleeping at night only waking me once a night for a feeding and then going back to sleep for another four hours. Up until last night going back to sleep meant she got to sleep next to mom.  Dad would enter in the morning to see us side by side sleeping in the same position. I never intended to start “co-sleeping” but when we first brought her home I didn’t want to be away from her at all. I was also afraid I wouldn’t wake up to her cries until she’d been at it for hours if I slept in another room. After a month and Kurt went back to work I still slept on the spare bed in her room so that Kurt wouldn’t be disturbed in the middle of the night, but when I wake up on a Saturday morning such as this Saturday to her turning her head back and forth so hard that she actually scoots herself up to me and then continues pounding her head into my spine till I wake up, it’s time for me to sleep in my own room. Last night I thought I’d try it. I even put her back in her crib half awake after her 2:30 feeding and all I heard was, “ah-heh ah-heh” and she was out! Yay!

This afternoon Kurt put her down in her crib for a nap. She started to wail, but it only lasted a minute and she was asleep. WOO!! Now if only I could have her let me sleep past 6:30 in the mornings.