HUGE sleep AW (long)
So you might remember I was b!tching and moaning recently about C's night nursing, not STTN, etc. and how it was driving me insane, especially because she'd never slept the night. Knock on wood, but she's done it the past two nights!
Saturday night I caved in and said that we would try a very brief, gentle Ferber-style thing- we said night night and put her in her crib with the sleep sheep and lullabye music playing. She cried but it wasn't the horrible, screameriffic crying she used to do (if she'd done that, or gotten super worked up at any point the whole operation would be shut down.) The deal was she'd have 10 minutes total, not including soothing, and DH would go in after 1, 2, 3 and 4 minutes. If after that she was still crying I'd take her out and cuddle her on my lap like usual. I made DH do it because I knew I'd want to pull her out right away, and she'd probably get more worked up seeing me anyhow. Anyway she was still crying at the 4 min interval but was noticeably winding down so I said let's give it another round, and within 2 minutes she was quiet (and presumably asleep!) She fell asleep at around 9:50 and slept until 7:30 when she woke to eat, and then slept next to me in bed for another 2ish hours after.
Yesterday she woke too early from a nap so I switched on her mobile, motion and music, and she fell back asleep listening to that, so we tried that again at bedtime. She fussed for about 60 seconds and then was done! Today she slept from then (about 9:40) until 6:20, and again woke to eat but fell back asleep for about 90 minutes.
DH is all "why didn't we do this before?" but I think both she and I just weren't ready for this. I needed to feel like she understands object permanence (that we'll always come back, and that she's not abandoned forever), that she could go a good stretch without milk (hearing about her weight jump on Friday at the pedi and going up 1% in weight was very relieving for me) and just getting to sort of a breaking point with my feelings about night nursing/waking. The recent talk here about sleep was a big factor too, especially from the moms that have similar, AP-style philosophies.
Anyway I just had to share with people that would get it. Pleas cross your fingers this keeps up, and that we can even get her crib moved back to her room soon once she's going strong at sleeping all night!
Re: HUGE sleep AW (long)
You know I'm thrilled for you.
I'm going to make an AWESOME big brother.
Awesome!!
I just wanted to let you know that even those of us who are pro Ferber/CIO (and there are varying degrees of that - I wouldn't "CIO" with my kids until they were 8 months old and if either of them had put up a serious fight, I would have TOTALLY caved and even now, if William fusses in the night, I only wait a couple of minutes before I go into him...but I digress) totally get it. We all want healthy, happy children who are well rested
And you're right on the money in saying that you and C had to be ready for it. If it'd been up to either my parents or my husband, my children would have cried it out at birth (okay, I'm exaggerating here...but my point is MUCH younger than I was comfortable with). I couldn't do it until I felt like my kids could handle it and I could handle it.