Progress

Hallelujah! Christian slept for a NINE hour stretch last night! Then I fed him and put him back to bed and he slept a couple more hours!

Four nights ago, I moved him from a bassinet next to our bed into a crib in his own room. I was a little anxious about the whole transition and wondered if I would be more tired than ever because now I would have to actually get out of bed and go down the hall if I needed to take care of him in the night. I also worried about him getting used to the crib and crying a ton and knew I wouldn't have an easy time with that.

Well, the first two nights were rough. Thankfully, I started the whole process on a weekend when Sam was off work and so he really helped me get through it. I was so frustrated the second night and ready to give up, but Sam encouraged me to persevere and offered to deal with Christian all night if I wanted him to.

My main objectives in this whole transition included the following:
1. If I nurse Christian anytime in the night, it has to be in the rocking chair in his room. Although tempting when I'm really exhausted, I can't just haul him back to my room and let him sleep and/or nurse in our bed anymore.

2. If he wakes up and cries in the night, wait a little bit to see if he can soothe himself back to sleep. It not, then try replacing his pacifier first. If he's still crying at that point, I can nurse him in his room but then he needs to go right back in his crib. And ideally, it would be at least six hours before I feed him but for the first couple of nights, I wasn't going to be too rigid about that.

3. Pray, pray, pray that he will learn to sleep long stretches on his own and learn to self soothe.

Well by the third night, things were looking up. He only woke up once, very briefly, and the pacifier got him back to sleep for the rest of the night.

And then, like I mentioned above, last night he was in bed at 8 p.m. and I didn't hear him make a peep until after 5:00 a.m. Yay! I hope and pray we are on the right track now.

I've know we've had our ups and downs with this whole sleeping thing, but never has Christian slept for nine hours in a row before. So at least now I know he is capable of it and there is hope.

Now the next goal is for ME to sleep through the night! After it not happening for so long, I found myself waking up constantly and worrying about Christian in the other room and wondering if he was okay. So although jubilant about his progress, I am still quite tired. I'm sure I'll get past this eventually.