No Turning Back
It's that time again Mom!
A good pre-cursor to this post is a blog I wrote a while ago titled “Sleep Patterns“, about Saioa’s sleeping habits at night. She was conditioned to waking up three times a night and had to be nursed back to sleep. I decided I had to cut down her nightly feedings to just one a night. I knew that the first few nights would be the hardest. I expected that when she didn’t get her 1pm feeding she would cry for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and then fall asleep. I also expected that the next night she would cry 10 or 15 minutes and fall asleep. And the night after that she would cry for maybe 5 minutes and fall asleep. And then finally after that, she wouldn’t cry at all, and eventually learn to sleep through to her 1am feeding.
But that didn’t happen. For one and a half weeks, she consistently cried for 15 to 20 minutes every time. At 1am, as soon as I heard even the tiniest peep out of her, I’d run to her room, happy to hold her and nurse her, feeling guilty that I’d made her cry so much at 11pm, but also wondering why she’s not broken of that yet.
It wasn’t until suddenly one night, it occurred to me that I was confusing her. She doesn’t have any concept of time. She doesn’t know whether it’s 11 or 1 or 5am for that matter. All she knew is that sometimes when she cried I picked her up, sometimes when she cried, I didn’t. I was teaching her to cry for me!
I knew I had to cut out all nighttime feedings. It was drastic, but at almost 10 months old, there’s no good reason why she’s not sleeping through the night. Not only that, but she was such a finicky eater during the day… I wondered if she would eat better during the day if she wasn’t grazing so much at night.
Stay tuned to Part 2 when I recount the night she learned how to sleep straight through till morning!
Thanks for telling this story. I tried it too and now Owen is sleeping through the night. I feel so rested in the morning, it makes the whole day better. Our babies are really growing up!
Yay for Owen! And you! Saioa is now sleeping like a champ through the night and I can’t believe I waited this long to train….ME!