Six month update
March 19, 2004 - 2:42 p.m.
Little Marlee is 6 months old today! Little is hardly the word for her. She's so big! She laughs now, not all the time, and only briefly. She smiles all the time and scrunches her little nose. We had her portraits done last night and she was like a little model. Smiling, cooing, tilting her head...it was hilarious! The photographer told me we could bring her back anytime. She kept doing new props and taking roll after roll of film...I can't wait to go pick them up to see how they turned out.
The next two weeks I've really committed to getting Marlee to sleep through the night. I'll start by weaning her off night feedings, then when we've gotten past that I will stop picking her up from her crib when she cries, then eventually I shouldn't have to talk/touch her at all, and maybe in two weeks, when I lay her in her crib at night, that's the last I will see of her till morning. I've known that she's had this sleeping problem for months now, but I've been unwilling to do much about it until she was officially 6 months. Now I am totally willing to forgo two weeks of sleep for a lifetime of sleeping more than 2 hours at a time. I'm giving us two weeks because any little disruption could cause a setback - and in the next week there are plenty of disruptions planned. For instance, this Saturday she is spending the night at Tim's mom's house. Then Tuesday we have her doctor's appointment and we'll be going to dinner afterwards for Tim's birthday. After that we have nothing planned for a few weeks so hopefully that period of time will be long enough to reinforce everything.
Lately she's been going to bed just fine, waking up a few times between 7 and 11 and going right back to sleep when she gets her pacifier replaced. Then around 11, she wakes up in a hysterical fit. At this point I nurse her back to a sleepy state. Then she wakes up again at 1:45, 2:30, 3, 4, 5:30 and 6. When she wakes up at 1:45, I've been refusing to feed her, but I will pick her up and rock her or talk to her to get her settled down. She starts getting hysterical if I put her back in her crib though, asleep or awake.
Last night when she woke at 11, I nursed her and put her back in her crib with my shirt. She snuggled right in with it and fell asleep. I went to bed, then started to panic, thinking she would suffocate so I took the shirt away. Then when she woke up at 1:45, I stood over her and held her head in my hands and kept talking directly into her ear, then stroked her head till she fell asleep. She woke an hour later, this time it was Tim's turn. I was exhausted, and he didn't have the patience to stand there for 45 minutes to get her to calm down and sleep. He brought her in and laid her in the bed next to me, where she instantly quieted down and went to sleep. She didn't wake up at all until 5:30 when she turned over and nursed and fell back asleep until 6:30am. We made it from 11pm - 5:30am without eating. I would have fed her at 4am if she wanted it. But I've decided between 11pm and 4am, no more nursing. She doesn't need it, it's become a habit for her.
