Sleep Update

Dear internet, I know you are dying for the latest update on the sleep saga...if not, keep reading and you can enjoy your own little bit of sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. (btw, I know the soother is supposed to go in his MOUTH, not his eye).

We got Gavin to get himself to sleep in the evening on his own with minimal stress. He squawks for about a minute and then realizes he'd feel better if he'd just close his eyes so he rolls over and goes to sleep. Mission #1 accomplished.

The problem was that we had gotten in the habit of nursing and cuddling back to sleep through the night. This, from my baby who slept through the night at 7 weeks and rarely nursed at night suddenly seemed to need to cuddle and nurse for ridiculous amounts of time three or four times per night?! The problem was mostly my fault, as usual. You see, he shares a room with Trevor and I was reluctant to let Gavin squawk himself back to sleep and disturb Trevor's sleep. So I'd rush in, pick him up and go downstairs to try to settle him. After three weeks of this, I was done!

I knew I needed to give him the chance to figure out how to self-soothe through the night, so I set up the playpen in our basement and camped out downstairs with him for a couple of nights.

The first night he woke several times; the first time he was up for about 25 minutes crying pretty hard. I went to him a couple of times and put his soother in or talked softly, but I didn't pick him up. The rest of the night, he awoke three or four times, squawked once or twice and went back to sleep.

Then last night, he went to sleep at 7:00 pm. And he slept through until Trevor came downstairs and woke him up at 7:45 am. RIGHT THROUGH. I, on the other hand, was up several times to have a peek at him and make sure he was ok.

I feel like a rock star today. It's amazing how great it feels to have some sleep under my belt! If he does it again tonight, we're moving back upstairs.