Shhhh! She's Sleeping!

I started this post a couple of weeks ago. Here it is with an update at the end:

We've started "sleep training" again. We did really well in March, but April was a month of back problems (me), stomach virus (all of us), and general crankiness and neediness (mostly Lucy... mostly). But in May we started again. We put the two crib mattresses on the floor again, and Lucy quickly took to sleeping beside me instead of on me. She's sleeping right now while I type this. I'm free! I'm free... to blog and water house plants and unload the dishwasher! At least I'm not stuck in the recliner beneath a sleeping baby for hours at a time. I've even gotten to thoroughly bathe by myself twice this week because she fell asleep early.

She does a good job of putting herself back to sleep. I nurse her to sleep in the first place, but I only have to nurse her back to sleep occasionally. She typically sleeps for a few hours at a time, but a few times she's awoken every 45 minutes during her nap and needed to nurse every time. I let her fuss a bit before I offer comfort or milk. If she insists that she needs to nurse, I let her. I tend to underestimate her hunger, so she may need the nourishment. Or she may just need a little extra closeness once in a while.  I'm OK with that.

It takes a while to get her to sleep. After she nurses for a few minutes, she sits up and wants to play. I've got a few stuffed animals on her mattress. They provide a cushion between her head and the side of the crib. And I wanted to give her the opportunity to choose a comfort item if she wanted to. She hasn't shown special interest in anything yet, despite my attempts since her birth to get her to love a little Tigger toy. She chews or sucks on the stuffed animals or waves them around and beats them against the mattresses. She bounces on the mattress. With the wild-eyed look of a professional wrestler jumping off the ropes on the side of the ring, she sits up on her knees and launches herself at my breast. She sometimes plays so vigorously that she spits up. Eventually, I'm able to pull her close and finish nursing her to sleep. But sometimes play takes more than 20 minutes and multiple nursing attempts. Getting her to sleep can be exhausting.

She's doing surprisingly well with waking up when I'm out of the room. She fusses, but she doesn't cry. She used to freak out. And she cries easily. When something upsets her, it goes deep enough to draw tears. And sometimes she has trouble letting go of the hurt. You'll think she's calming down, and then you can tell she has thought about what upset her, and it upsets her all over again. She may just be a sensitive kid, and we may eventually have to help her learn to cope with it. But for now she's a baby, so I'm impressed when she doesn't cry when she wakes up alone.

We're still figuring out her sleep schedule so that we can get her in bed before she gets overtired. We've had a problem with consistency. We haven't been good about setting a sticking with a routine, but Lucy falls asleep anywhere from 7:30-midnight, so it's a little hard to figure out when her best bedtime should be. With both Matt and me at home this summer, our schedule is wide open and can accomodate whatever works for Lucy. Much of parenting so far has been negotiating between the needs of all the members of the family, and sleep scheduling is no different. I have figured out that she needs a nap 1.5 hours after waking, whenever that is. That's been clear and consistent. The other nap(s) and bedtime are still in flux. Ideally, I'd like her sleep schedule to allow us to go to Rhyme Time at the Library and to the pool and to keep her in a good mood during church, but we'll work on it.

Because of my back, we may let her sleep on her mattress on the floor for the foreseeable future, especially now that she can pull up and we need to lower the mattress height and she's over 18 pounds. I'm too weak and too short to lay her in the crib without waking her. I did a little reading on the Montessori method of child education, and it turns out that a floor bed is a Montessori recommendation. It's all about giving kids opportunities to discover and to become self-sufficient. The floor bed lets kids choose to go to sleep when they feel tired. I'd be thrilled if Lucy reacted to fatigue by getting into bed by herself. I don't expect it to happen soon. I don't know that I expect it at all. She's doesn't seem like she's going to be eager to go to sleep.

Sleeping on the crib mattress is also rough on my back, so we tend to end up in the recliner before morning. And sometimes I let her nap on me. But we've clearly established that sleeping happens on her mattress. Overall, I'm pleased with her progress. Ultimately, I'd like for her to fall asleep without nursing, but we'll get there eventually.

UPDATE
Sleep training continued through our travels to see family. We had floor beds everywhere we stayed, and Lucy adjusted well. She even got over her mid-feeding manic periods and settled down quickly. She probably ate more solid food and got more stimulation than she's used to, which might have helped. As I type this, she's sleeping and hogging most of a twin-sized mattress. I hope the calm continues at home. I also hope that the more regular napping continues. She didn't have a strict nap schedule while travelling, but it seemed more like a schedule than what happens at home most days. We do need to do something about needing to nurse to sleep. It made travel trying at times because I sat next to her in the car and couldn't feed her when she got sleepy, and she couldn't understand why. I'm sure it was very frustrating to be so close to comfort and a meal and yet still be denied.She eventually settled for sucking on my finger, but I had to leave it in her mouth for more than an hour at a time and sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for half an hour before she fell asleep. Twinkle, Twinkle is magic, but it takes a little while to kick in. Overall, I'm still pleased with her progress. Maybe June will be even better.