Mr. Sandbaby

Ah the coveted sleep of new parents. We miss it so. Then again, I say this all the time, but I know I also need to recognize that we have it SO much easier than it could be. Our daughter started sleeping through the night (we’re talking 8+ hours) at about 5 weeks old – coincidentally starting on New Year’s Eve 2012.

We somewhat knew we were going to get lucky during her first couple weeks of life when we struggled to keep her awake during feedings. Our pediatrician was ready for us to let her sleep as long as she wanted at night as soon as she was back up to her birth weight. I think it takes the average baby 2 weeks; ours needed 3. And once she was back over 8 pounds, we were ready! Good thing, so was she.

Bugga slept great at night for quite awhile, with daytime napping happening here and there, when and where she felt like it. When I went back to work at 12 weeks and she started daycare, it became very clear we needed to focus more on those naps. Even worse, sometime around 14 weeks she started waking up at night too. We verified with our pediatrician that she wasn’t waking to eat since she had previously slept through the night and not needed meals then, so we were careful not to use food as a crutch.

Meanwhile, I started reading every book on sleep training I could find, while constantly fearing the lights on the baby monitor that alerted us to her waking up earlier than desired. I read BabyWise, Lull-a-baby, Your Fussy Baby...and we are now trying to use a combination of all these (and any other ideas, hint hint) to teach our daughter she is capable of soothing herself to sleep without Mom or Dad. Cry it out (CIO) scares me at this age (4 months old), though if this keeps up I might have a different opinion two months from now. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes...