holy moses... she slept last night!!!

You will not believe what happened last night. I still don't believe it.

Adeline slept from 9:45pm - 4:40am without waking up! That is almost 7 full hours!!!!

Now that may not seem too impressive. Lots of one year olds sleep that long or even longer at night. Yes, lots of kids, but definitely NOT our kid. We are seriously lucky to get a 3 hour stretch and even that happens only once in a very blue moon. Our SOP is around 1.5 - 2 hour stretches of sleep.

So, how did we go from that to 7 hours you ask? Night weaning. I didn't have very high hopes that it would be successful, or that we would even follow through with it. Robert and I decided to give it a try and if it was too stressful on Adeline we would stop, wait a few months, and try again. To my surprise, she night weaned pretty easily. The most she ever fussed was 6 minutes and she never got hysterical. When she did fuss, it was more of a half hearted whine than an all out cry.

I'm trying not to get myself too excited. Last night could have been a fluke and tonight she could be back to her old self again. But I'm hoping beyond all hope that this may actually be the start of a new era in the Shelton family... the era of sleep.

For anyone reading this with a little guy or girl who is a constant night waker, I know you are dying to know the details of what we did. So here goes...

NOTE: We co-sleep with Adeline, so we did this all within the family bed. Our problem was that Adeline woke up way too often and 95% of the time I had to nurse her to get her back to sleep. Sometimes she would stay latched on to me basically all night. I was really, really tired of this after a year.

GETTING STARTED: We followed a modified Dr. Jay Gordon approach to night weaning. He recommends choosing 7 hours of the night to stop the nursing. So you nurse the baby back to sleep before and after this 7 hour period. That seemed too confusing to me. I decided to nurse her to sleep still, but once she was asleep I was going to move toward not nursing her at all until morning. Incidentally as I've gone through this I could tell she was actually hungry around 5:30, so that is when I start nursing her again.

THE FIRST DAYS: I actually started doing this a few days before we decided to night wean Adeline. It was out of pure frustration. Basically the plan is to let them nurse for just a few minutes, then delatch them while they are still awake. Then cuddle, pat, rock, whatever it takes to get them back to sleep. Addie didn't really protest at all. She just rolled over and went back to sleep for the most part.

PHASE TWO: We started this on New Year's Eve and technically were still in this part of the plan last night. No nursing at night. You just pat, rock, cuddle, sing, etc... whatever it takes to get them back to sleep without nursing. This is where I got rid of the pacifier, too. She was not really attached to it, so that was pretty easy. So I would nurse & rock her to sleep, then when she woke up I would just cuddle with her and sing to her. For the life of me I cannot understand how my singing puts her to sleep, but it does. Lets just say my singing voice is one only a daughter could love. :) I really thought these were going to be rough nights and that we would give up all together. To my surprise, she really didn't get that upset. She still woke up a lot, but she just fussed for a second or two, then went back to sleep. She was, however very fidgety in her sleep, thrashing around a lot. The first two nights she was waking up as much or more than normal (every 1.5 hours or so). The third night she woke up every 2 hours with one 4 hour stretch from 1:20am - 5:40am. Then last night she woke up an hour after I put her down, then didn't wake up again until 4:40am. I said "shhhh" and she went back to sleep really quickly. She woke again at 5:45, I nursed her, then she woke up at 7:20 for the day. We were dumbfounded. I was on edge all night thinking "she's going to wake up any second".

PHASE THREE: This technically starts tonight, but it is basically what we did last night anyway. No nursing and no picking up or big time cuddling, just light touching and talking/singing. I thought this would be hard because the first few nights of Phase Two she was super reliant on me to cuddle with her to fall asleep. But I barely had to touch her the first time she woke up last night, then when she woke up at 4:40 I didn't even touch her. Supposedly the night waking can continue for a week or two or even longer, but eventually they will learn to put themselves back to sleep with less assistance from you. Oh I hope last night was not a fluke... hopefully Adeline is just a fast learner (if you can call one year "fast").

Here's to many more restful nights...