Our precious angel is sleeping through the night consistently, like ever since last Friday! Woo hoo! That's especially nice for me because, although I had only been getting up once during the night, getting back to sleep was sometimes a real challenge.
Now this week my new challenge is getting the baby to nap during the day. She loves to be held and will sleep in anyone's arms, but lay her down and she'll wake right up and scream. Once she starts crying she doesn't stop until someone picks her up, so "crying herself to sleep" is a great idea but doesn't work on this kid.
I am realizing how easy it is to buy into one philosophy and follow all the rules instead of my normal goal of gleaning bits and pieces from different ones. Case in point: The aforementioned baby care book that was so helpful for getting Olivia to sleep at night says to swaddle a baby for daytime naps, but not to darken the room or play white noise (so the baby gets used to normal daytime sounds and doesn't sleep too hard during the day). But Olivia wouldn't sleep during the day unless we were running errands or someone was holding her, and housework was starting to pile up. Then yesterday my friend Mary-full-of-baby-wisdom suggested trying the whole swaddle/darkness/white noise combo during the day since OJ wasn't having any trouble sleeping at night. And it worked! Yesterday afternoon Olivia had to be *woken up* from her nap (3 hours), she slept 10-7 last night (the new normal), and this morning she took a two-hour nap, fussing a couple times and then soothing herself back to sleep - another first. Yay! We're still in fluke range, especially when considering she just had shots, but if this becomes the new normal that's a huge improvement to our daytime routine.
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