Knock on Wood

I know I'm jinxing things by posting this, but last night marks three nights in a row that Adele has slept through the night. To my knowledge, that has never happened before! For the longest time, we were waking once or twice for a feeding. Then she just woke up on her own to eat. After we determined she was gaining fine and didn't need that nighttime bottle, she still would wake up, but we could get her back down with a snuggle in the rocking chair. However, for the past few months S and I got lazy and started bringing her to bed with us at the first sign of crying. Path of least resistance, I suppose. And that was fine for a while, until it became obvious that she preferred to sleep sideways and Steve and I were slowly forced to the very edges of our respective sides of the bed.

So, we'd decided we needed to take control of the situation. Neither of us are fans of "cry it out," and the times we did try it--out of desperation or frustration--were met with complete and utter failure. Adele pukes when she gets worked up, it seems. What we did do, however, is modify our evening/bedtime routine just enough to make it clear that it's time for sleeping--in one's own bed! She still may fuss a bit when you lay her down (we still rock her to sleep/drowsy, and that's not going to change anytime soon), but a few pats on the bottom and sneaking out usually does the trick. She may even fuss a bit once you leave, but I can tell when she's fussing in her sleep (or on her way to sleep) and when she's crying wide-awake. In the case of the latter, we go in and start over and that's usually enough. And overnight, the biggest change we've made is that we're no longer turning the volume up on the monitor speaker in our room. It's sort of cheating, I realize, but I know that if she's REALLY upset we'll hear her anyway (our house isn't that big and she's a loud girl), but we're also not waking up at the first peep she makes. So far, she's not made enough of a fuss to rouse us, and this morning she was still sound asleep at 6:00! (Yes, I know 6:00 seems awfully early, but I'll take an early morning after a night of solid sleep over a late morning after a night interrupted sleeep any day!)

One side effect I had not anticipated, though, was the fact that I'm more tired now than I was when she was waking up in the night. I don't quite get that. I think I'm still EXPECTING her to wake up at any moment, so I don't really get into that deep sleep that I used to. Hopefully, if this is a permanent trend, I'll relax enough to get a restful night's sleep.

And if I haven't yet ensured our failure by posting this, surely our upcoming weekend of travel will do the trick! Ah, but it will be worth it: We travel to beautiful Iowa, my home state, to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary! Surely a disruption is a small price to pay for such a lovely, happy occasion.