But since she was about 7 weeks old, she started sleeping through the night...for the most part. (Some nights she would wake up once to nurse in the middle of the night.) So I have been COMPLETELY spoiled with this awesome sleeper for the last 7 weeks or so.
Until about 2 weeks ago.
When she decided she was done with the whole crib thing.
Which is NOT fun when you get up at 5:30 for work every day!
So we decided to give the "sleep training" thing another try.
(We tried it out when she was about 2 months old and realized she was still too young and we weren't quite ready for it either. So she continued to get rocked to sleep and then moved to her crib once she was asleep...Our thought was: She's sleeping through the night, so why mess with something that IS working?)
The "Ferber Method" seemed to be the best fit for our family. (You can click HERE for more info on it if you are interested.)
We decided to try it out once the Christmas Holidays break began so it wouldn't be too bad if we lost some sleep...which is supposed to happen the first couple nights.
So H went out of town last night for a wrestling meet in Dallas. My good friend, Melody came over to stay with me/coach me through NOT going back into her room when/if she was screaming so awfully...as I had been anticipating all day.
Anticipating so much so that I was dreading the night to come when we would actually have to do this. My stomach hurt from being so nervous about it!
But I could not believe how WONDERFUL she did!
She was sleepy a little early so I put her in her crib about 6:50 pm. She of course started crying. I waited 2 min. and then went in. She stopped crying. I didn't pick her up, just rubbed her head and assured her it was ok. I left the room and she started crying again. I waited 4 min. and went back in repeating the same thing. She started crying again when I left the room and I went in again after 6 min. and assured her I hadn't fled the country. At that point she fell asleep by 7:15!
She did end up waking up around 7:40. (She usually eats around 7 or 8 pm for the final feeding of the night before bed.) So I fed her and then put her in her crib around 8:15 before she was asleep. She didn't cry AT ALL and went straight to sleep!! She slept all through the night until about 6 am and didn't wake up once!! I was SO proud of her!!
She's doing the same thing with naps and everything seems to be going so far so good! (It's definitely NOT perfectly perfect, but the effort put into it seems to be paying off!)
I know we are going to go through some rough patches until we get this "fall asleep on our own" thing completely down, but it's so worth it to finally get sleep again...for her and for me!!
Just look at this happy baby sleeping so good on her own again!!
On another good note, she's had breastmilk exclusively since birth. I was able to pump enough (in the middle of the night and at work) to continue this. I planned on her having exclusive breastmilk until she turned 4 months old (through the end of this month.) I was then going to supplement with formula during the day when I'm at work and she would continue to be nursed in the morning, at night, on weekends, over holidays, etc... Only because I didn't think I was keeping up with the amount of milk she was intaking compared to the amount I was pumping. But after talking with H about it, we both decided, why not keep giving her exclusive breastmilk as long as possible? So until then, that's what we are doing!! So happy about this!!!
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