Day 25: Nighttime sleep success, naptime sleep failure

I think I can tentatively say MARI HAS STARTED SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! I'm so happy!

Last night Mari slept for 11 hours, from about 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., without a single peep. In her crib, in her room. Without sleeping on her tummy. Without a dream feed. And she woke up happy and well-rested, not obviously starving, though with a good appetite once I did feed her. I'm so conditioned to waking up at night that I woke up at about 3:30 a.m., boobs sore and swollen, but even so, I had the best night's sleep I've had since before Mari was born.

The three nights prior too, she technically slept through the night, if one defines "through the night" as five hours. I don't know yet what tonight will hold, but as I write this it's nearly midnight and Mari has yet to utter a peep, so I'm optimistic.

What's more, she has put herself to sleep without me in the room for the last three nights running. I've still been doing her bedtime routine and getting her good and sleepy, but then I've put her in the crib, stayed with her for another couple of minutes, kissed her goodnight and left. Tonight she "talked" a little after I left, but only for a minute or two. Then, blessed silence.

I know not to count on a good night every night, and I know there may be further sleep regressions ahead, but I think both of us have finally learned she is capable of putting herself to sleep and back to sleep, and staying asleep all night or at least most of the night. It feels like a miracle.

Now, if only her napping habits would improve. Today was actually a particularly bad day for naps. She only had a 45-minute nap in the morning and a 30-minute nap in the early afternoon. Her late-afternoon nap totaled two hours but she woke up in the middle and the only way I could get her back down was to nurse her back to sleep, which I really don't like doing. What's more, I or Jon had to stay with her for all her naps, as we've been doing pretty much all her life with rare exceptions, and even so we weren't always able to keep her asleep or get her back to sleep.

It's not that Mari doesn't need to nap as much anymore, because she was obviously overtired and cranky most of the day today, going from laughter to tears like a bipolar mosquito on a roller coaster. Maybe tonight's sleep was saved by her last, lengthier nap, but the day was hard on me because she spent a lot of time screaming shrilly.

I've now read over the No-Cry Nap Solution and will log the day tomorrow and try to create a plan. I must say, I've already started trying to use Elizabeth Pantley's two main suggestions to get a short napper to nap longer and they haven't been working. But maybe things will improve when I've put together an integrated plan to improve her napping.

Day 9: To co-sleep or not to co-sleep?

Before Mari was born, here's how I imagined things: she would sleep in her Arm's Reach co-sleeper bassinet until she started getting too big for it. It would be good for both of us to have her there as a young baby because she'd need to nurse at night.  I'd nurse her in bed, put her back in her co-sleeper and we'd both sleep until the next time she needed to nurse. Then, once she started getting too big for her co-sleeper, perhaps around four months or so, she would easily transition to her crib because by then she'd be big enough not too need to nurse at night.

The reality looked more like this: I would put the younger Mari in her co-sleeper at the beginning of the night, but once she got onto the boob and started nursing, I'd drift off and wouldn't put her back in the co-sleeper. An hour or so later, I'd wake up uncomfortable because I'd be holding my shoulder in a weird position over her head. So I'd try to put her in her co-sleeper at that point. Often, she'd wake up, and I'd wind up putting her back in our bed again to comfort her. So she got used to being in our bed and came to prefer it. So she slept less in her co-sleeper and not at all in her crib until recently.

Now Mari is really too big for the co-sleeper. She can still fit in it -- just -- but her arms touch the sides when she flings them out, and sometimes that wakes her up. She still seems to prefer being in our bed. She wakes up less often that way. But sometimes it's clear that a movement or sound of mine wakes her up. More often, a movement or sound of hers wakes me up, and my shoulders feel permanently kinked from holding my arms above her head.

I think there are good reasons to co-sleep. I do think more cuddling helps parents and baby bond, and helps the baby feel secure. As I said, Mari does tend to wake up less often when she's sleeping with us. It is indeed easier to nurse and comfort her when she's right beside me.

However, I don't want to co-sleep with Mari forever. I think it's interfering with her learning to fall asleep and stay asleep on her own. It definitely isn't good for Jon's sleep (never mind our sex life), and it's debatable what it does for mine. I do spend more time more fully awake if I have to go to her at night when she's sleeping in her crib down the hall. However, I am less often awakened by little snorts and movements in her sleep. 

Since there seem to be more pros to getting her to sleep in her crib, I've been working on keeping her in her crib longer at night. Once I get sick of tromping down the hall in the middle of the night, I bring her into bed with me. I co-sleep with her at naptime if I also want a nap, or if she's overtired and really fussy and is having difficulty calming down enough to nap.

Sometimes do I wonder if I'm striking the right balance. There's no shortage of experts on one hand telling me that co-sleeping is best to have a close attachment to my baby, or on the other hand telling me that I should have made her sleep in her crib from day one and cry it out when she wakes up. I don't know the right answer -- I'm just doing what feels right at the moment. I do hope she spends full nights in her crib soon, but I make a point of doing a lot of cuddling during the day and I put her in her sling for outings whenever practical.

Today: It was a bad day for keeping on the schedule. She woke up later than usual, so I let her go for her morning nap later, and that nap turned out to be a long one. Then I took her shopping, which took longer than I expected, so she had a late and short early-afternoon nap, followed by a very late late-afternoon nap. Still, I have had some success this evening: a couple of times, she fussed in her sleep, I waited, and she put herself back to sleep.