Last night was our first night of trying to get PrettyGirl back in the habit of sleeping through the night. Usually, when she wakes up and cries, M nurses her, and she goes back to sleep. That is a habit we don't want to get into, so our plan was to make a minimal effort if PG woke up during the night - just rub her back but go no further. It ended up being somewhat disastrous.
She did sleep for 8.5 hours, so we had that going for us. But around 4:30, she woke up and started fussing a little. So I went in and rubbed her back to try to soothe her back to sleep. She did not like that the person who was not equipped to feed her had come in. She further did not like that I was not picking her up. No sir, she did not care for any of that at all!
For about 40 minutes she literally kicked and screamed. Also pounded. She was an angry baby. Over the course of those 40 minutes, we slowly caved in. First, I picked her up. Then M came in and picked her up. And finally, PG was happily nursing, just as usual.
But even this was not enough. She had worked herself into such a lather that not even nursing would put her back to sleep. We finally took her into our bed, and she slept on M's chest until it was time for us to get up two hours later (which was about a half hour later than usual - we were exhausted!) So we ended up setting an even worse precedent.
Tonight, we hope to do better. We have a firmer plan - if she wakes up and cries, check to make sure she's not in mortal peril, preferably while looking from no closer than the doorway, and then go back to bed and let her work out her wakey problem on her own. To help prevent her waking up in the first place, we've put her back in a swaddle, since that worked the last time she had problems getting to sleep.
Here's hoping it all works out!
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