Sleeping through the night!

Since Sonia hit 22 weeks, she has been a different baby. A good napper, good eater, and true delight to be with baby! And she’s sleeping through the night – waking up happy after going 11-12 hours from bedtime and 8-9 hours from her last feeding!

This development coincided with a couple things:

• Crossing 14 lbs
• Learning to suck her thumb intentionally
• Eating more than 5 oz / feeding during the day
• Re-instating the 10pm dream feed
• A supposed happy time in the Wonder Weeks calendar
• A week of cooler weather

The clarity that only a good night’s sleep can bring has made me think back on what went right, and wrong, over the last 2 months of sleep regression and training. Here’s what I would tell my 2-month-ago-self if I could go back in time (not that I would listen :)):

• This too shall pass: While in the middle of it, it feels like every decision is going to make or break her sleeping habits for life.  However, the developments come, seemingly in spite of, not because of, whatever you try to do to “help.”  Sonia learning to roll over to sleep on her tummy, then find her fingers, then suck her thumb consistently all were critical in reaching the sleep-through-the-night milestone.
• Trial by Error:  Sometimes I feel like we tortured poor Sonia over the last couple months by being inconsistent, but every day/night was different, and no one solution seemed to fit every scenario. We just had to feel it out.  That being said, it is good to make sure that other caregivers are completely aligned with your strategy before starting anything – delaying that conversation may have delayed Sonia’s progress as well.
• Crying it Out:  In some ways, I do feel like letting her cry it out was a useful tool to help her along, but in general, it may have been more detrimental than beneficial in our case.  Sonia’s training was less about going to sleep on her own and more about weaning from the pacifier and night feeds, since she never had trouble going to sleep without rocking/etc.  While her duration of crying at each instance was never more than 20 mins, we did not have the experience of others where after 3-4 days of successively less crying she was sleeping like a champ.  It was pretty much a month of not knowing whether she’d be completely happy when we set her down or she woke up early, or whether she’d be screaming for 5-20 mins.  Poor thing also started to cry every time we’d take her back to her nursery for a nap and during her bedtime routine, shortly after sleep training began.  This makes me think she was in some small way traumatized by the CIO method.  I feel like if we tried to help her with her self-soothing developments while she was awake and happy, and just waited it out with the sleep training, we might have had better success.
• Feeding: I really think the dream feed is critical to sleep training.  There was a big difference in the rest of her night between when I was able to preempt her waking with a dream feed and when she’d wake up and cry for a meal.  If anything, solids were detrimental to her sleeping at the 4-5 month stage, not helpful.
• Naps: SO much harder than nighttime sleep, especially during the 4 month sleep regression!