Our Sleeping Through the Night Strategy, or lack thereof.

Since I mentioned that Adelyn slept through the night sans-Nap Nanny, two things have happened. One, she woke up for an hour last night to eat, so, again my theory that as soon as I brag about sleep it always comes back to my bite me in the ass, and, two, I learned a lot about Adelyn and the little person she's becoming.

We didn't really do anything definite, no concrete strategy. I followed some lovely readers' suggestions and looked into different techniques and routines, but as usual I got bored or frustrated and just stuck to what we were doing before. Which is a whole lot of whatever sort of felt right at the moment, be it letting her cry for a few minutes or rushing to comfort her. We had a basic rule--for the general fussing right after she's put down, and the generic "someone come entertaaaain me" middle of the night freak-out, we tried to wait ten minutes before intervening. And then we'd go in her room, rub her back, shush her, pick her up if the freak-out had reached inconsolability, and then we'd crawl back in bed and do this until it worked. Every ten minutes.

I think the main thing that changed as far as "sleep training" versus what we were doing before, back when we depended on the ultra-comfy Nap Nanny to do our nighttime parenting for us, is that we stopped rushing to Adelyn's side the second she woke up. Because before I did this, this overbearing, overreactive first-time-mom kind of thing. It's a strength and a weakness of my parenting. I worry too much about everything. We never let her full-on cry it out, but we slowly got our message across that unless something has gone wrong or she's truly scared or hungry, night time is for sleeping, period. And mommy and daddy are here to help but we are here to help you learn to sleep. I realized that most of the nighttime fits weren't due to anything but simple frustration. Frustration that her sleep crutch was gone, that something had changed and she had no say in it. And parents can help with the hunger, the soothing, the big and small fixes necessary throughout babyhood and life. But dealing with simple frustration--that's a personal battle, one that I see Adelyn conquering more and more each day.

Jason and I really leaned on each other, too. And for the millionth time I commend every single parent out there, because I don't know if I could do it. Not with an ounce of sanity intact, anyway. Jason and I took shifts, and we stuck to them. We alternated if one of us had to get up really early in the morning for something, and we picked up each other's slack if one of us really needed an extra hour or two. Jason is the most amazing father and parenting partner I could ever dream up. I'm lucky. (So is Adelyn.)

It took a week of us not rushing to her side for the message to sink in, and then the nighttime wakings went from three times, to two, to one, then she was just up for a quick bottle, and then for three nights in a row she slept straight through, for twelve glorious hours. And then last night teething reared its ugly, sleep-depriving head, and Highlands Teething Tablets saved the day. Er, night.

I'm not going to say our sleep troubles are over. Because they never are, I think. I learned my lesson about that a few months ago, after our three-month-marathon of sleeping through the night every single night without exception came to a screeching halt. There will be another battle to face. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.

But one thing's for sure--Adelyn has learned to sleep without her Nap Nanny. And all it took was a little sleep training on her part--and mostly mine--that she would be okay without me magically appearing by her side every time she got a little frustrated.