Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Sleep training - holding steady

We've been doing sleep training for the past week or so and we've seen a vast improvement in Lily's sleeping habits. Things aren't perfect but is there really such a thing as a perfect sleeping baby? (I think that they are as mythical as pink unicorns!) Lily no longer wakes every hour and in fact, has actually slept for more than 7 1/2 hours in a row on two occasions. She does often wake in the middle of the night but will usually only cry for a short period of time before falling back to sleep. Normal nights now look like this - bedtime at 7:30pm, a feed at 11pm, a feed at 4am (although I am working toward eliminating this one, especially since I know that she can now go longer than 5 hours without eating), a feeding/diaper change at 6am and up for the day between 8-9am. She has 2-3 naps per day, usually for 1 - 2 1/2 hours each time. Scott probably has the hardest time with listening to her cry, especially for naps (honestly, he rarely wakes in the night anymore and often says "wow, what a great night" when Lily has actually been up crying a few times...). As for me, it was really hard to listen to her cry for the first night but I know that this program works and my commitment to it helps get me through those crying spells. Plus, I think that the mental shift towards accepting nighttime crying has allowed me to sleep better - I usually know that she has cried in the night but it often doesn't seem like it was for very long...either that's true or my brain is just telling my body to go back to sleep because it knows that Lily will be a-ok.

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