My Sleeping Beauty!

So it finally happened: My beautiful baby slept through the night! And it was glorious! She slept 7 hours from midnight until 7am.

We have been working on it for awhile. After her sleepy newborn phase ended we went through a rough patch in which she would only sleep when she was in our arms. And although we said she would never sleep in bed with us, things change when you are really tired and it is the only way she will sleep. So for awhile she was sleeping in bed with us, and I don't really think it was working for any of us. Plus, we learned that co-sleeping greatly increases the risk for SIDS. So back to the bassinet it was. That was definitely an adjustment that she did not take to easily.

Finally I read some tips about how to get your baby to sleep through the night. The ones that we found to be the most helpful were: try not to change or feed them during the time that they should be asleep. They said this should train them not to wake up for a changing or feeding. We phased out the changing first, and she didn't seem to upset about it. So then we tried phasing out the feedings. I was surprised that she really didn't seem upset about that either.

We did notice, that if we did a real good swaddle, one that she couldn't break loose from, she was more likely to stay asleep. So the routine became rolling her up in a nice, tight swaddle, giving her the pacifier, and putting her down in the bassinet. She would usually sleep for about 3 to 4 hours and then wake up. When she woke up, I would pick her up, reswaddle (if she had broken loose), put the pacifier back in, and rock her back to sleep. Surprisingly she usually fell back to sleep within 5 to 10 minutes. That was already a huge improvement, and when she only woke up once (for about 5 minutes), two nights ago, I knew everything was working and we were really close. I had no idea how close! Last night was fantastic, and I only checked to make sure she was breathing twice ;) Fingers crossed that she keeps it up, and that the move to Dallas this weekend doesn't mess up her schedule too much.

My burrito baby: In her swaddle