Sleeping Like a Baby

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the pediatrician told us it was time to start letting Emily cry it out at night. Since we were in the middle of our move, we decided to hold off and give her some time to settle in before we tried everything new at once. We also weren't totally convinced that Emily was getting enough to eat during the day to go all night without eating. Lately, she's been going to bed (with the Woombie on) between 8-8:30 at night and will sleep until about 2:30 AM before waking up to eat. We feed her, put her right back to bed, and she'll sleep until about 5:30 AM. Since that's the time we usually get up, we feed her again and put her back to bed. She normally will sleep until about 8:00 AM and then she's up for the day (minus naps).

This week will be the first week I'm not traveling since we moved, so we decided it was the right time to try sleeping differently. Still, we want to take this one step at a time, so last night after her bath, Emily put her pjs on, but not the Woombie. She ate her bedtime meal, went to sleep by about 8:30, and I put her in the crib. It's so sweet to see her sleeping with her little arms and legs all sprawled out.

She woke up around 10:30--usually, when she's sleeping with the Woombie, she'll wake up and put herself back to sleep pretty quickly. Without the Woombie, it's a little different...so I let her cry for 5 minutes before going in to her. I never knew 5 minutes could last for an hour! It's agonizing to watch that precious little girl on the monitor, and it makes you feel like the worst parent in the world! I went in, picked her up, and she was instantly fine. While it feels great to be able to soothe her so easily, it also makes you realize that she's really figuring out how to work us to get what she wants! She went to sleep on my shoulder and I put her back down, but a couple of minutes later, she woke up crying again. This time, I let her go for about 8 minutes before going in, and the same thing happened. The third time, she cried for 10 minutes and then fell asleep. She slept until 4:00 AM!

At 4:00, we knew she was hungry, so Mick got her up, changed her and fed her, and she went right back to sleep. We took advantage of the situation and went back to bed too. At about 7:00 AM, she woke up for the day. For our first step in changing the sleep routine, we feel like it was pretty successful!