A good night!

Trixi282

I'll start by saying that I know 6-7 hours in one stretch at night is pretty much sleeping through the night.... and I've been lucky that J has been sleeping for that long for almost a month now on and off (she has her bad nights mixed in).  But there's typically a little fussiness in her sleep once or twice too.

But last night she slept for 9 hours straight last night... which is (almost) completely through the night for her right now!!  She went down at 8:30, and woke up at 5:30!  (I did wake up once around 3:30 to her kicking her legs... and then she farted, but she never made any grunting or fussy noises, and never woke up). 
We've been feeding her at 6:00 lately, before we both go to work, so DH got up to eat his bfast quickly and then took her just before 6 to feed her while I showered.  She stays awake until about 7:45 when I drop her off at daycare, and she's usually a little sleepy or asleep by then.

This is how I got there over the course of 1.5 weeks... for some who might be in a similar boat (you can skip this if you don't care!):
Well, I started noticing a pattern of her waking up at the exact same time each night for almost a week... and I read one persons post/reply saying that one of the books she read said when they wake up at the same time, within 10 minutes, each night it's out of habbit not out of need.  And I thought that might be true for J, because she was always waking up at 3:30 or 3:40... and I was just feeding her as she started to fuss, not when she was really crying, and I felt like I was giving into her pattern. 

A few days before I went back to work (so about 2 weeks ago) I decided to try and just soothe her back to sleep and not feed her... well the first night she fussed on and off for an hour and then fell back asleep for 2 hours.  Then she got into a 'routine' of waking up once between 1:00 and 2:00 for only a few minutes, I'd just put my hand on her chest and shhh her to sleep again (sometimes giving her a paci).  She would fall back asleep...

She would also wake up between 3:00 and 4:00 and do the same thing... so I would do the same thing again.  Sometimes this one would last 30 minutes, on and off, but she never got to the point of really loud or really bad fussy/crying.  It was always whimpers and kicking, etc (possibly gas... and half of the time she was still sleeping while fussing.)  Then, she would wake up around 5:30/5:45 and would wake up babbling (occasionally fussing)... and then get really fussy, so we've been getting up at 5:45 or 6:00 to feed her once she is noticably not happy in bed anymore.

So it's been a bit easier on me because I have her in the PnP in our room and it's pulled up to about 1 foot from our bed, so I would just roll over and stretch my arm out, or sit up in bed and reach out to her, without actually getting up/out of bed.  Then I could just roll back over and go back to sleep.

I'm excited for this because if she keeps this up, I'll feel a lot more comfortable transitioning her to her crib for good (she's been in there a few nights here and there) since her room is clear across our apartment.  I've kept her in our room because getting up and walking through the dining room and living room is a pain (and hazardous some nights!) especially if she's just fussy and not waking up for a feeding at night anymore.

Hooray for a good night!  I feel fantastic this morning, even though I woke up at 5:30, and I'm NOT a morning person!!