Making progress

I am happy to say that our sweet girl has grown leaps and bounds in the sleep department. She is now able to go down in her crib drowsy but awake and simply "talk" herself to sleep and use her thumb for comfort. This is a big deal for us! We felt that during the colic stage the only way to get her to sleep was to swaddle her, nurse her, and ever so carefully lay her in the crib asleep. It got us through the colic stage, but I knew at 4 months that things had to start to change. She was never staying asleep anymore when we'd transfer her from our arms to the crib! It took a few weeks with quite a few tears, but I think she has the hang of it now! We continued allowing her to nurse to sleep at bedtime, mostly because she'd fall asleep nursing anyway no matter what I did and it also seemed like it might put her into a nice deep sleep right off the bat. Tonight I let go of that and nursed her with the light on and waited to swaddle her (with one arm out so she can find a thumb). She got drowsy right off the bat, but one burp later she was much more awake. She nursed a good 20 minutes rather than falling asleep after 10 and she took to the new routine really well. I finished feeding her then did our "nap" routine. She talked for about 10 minutes, but no tears! And she's been asleep for over an hour without a peep!

Emily is still waking up multiple times a night, and I have been feeding her at least 2 of those times and sometimes 3. That has been very difficult. It has been hard to know if she's really hungry or if she's just wanting the comfort that nursing provides. Patting and shushing her back to sleep rarely works..and if it does she is up an hour later instead of 3 or 4 hours later if I nurse her. Because she doesn't take the bottle well, it is futile to offer that to her as a source of food in the middle of the night. In the middle of the day with 45 minutes free, sure. But not at night. So....we have had a confusing month or so of trying to let her cry a little to put herself back to sleep but also still feeding her when we think she might be hungry. I continually ask Greg in the middle of the night, "What should I do?" It is hard to think clearly in the middle of the night! I am hoping that weaning her off of the nursing to night sleep routine will possibly help. But in reality we might need to cut out the night feedings entirely and just see what happens- so we can all 3 start to sleep more. It's been a long month in the crying department for naps, but it has paid off. She does great with that now. I want to give Emily the gift of learning to fall asleep on her own and putting herself back to sleep peacefully at night. Pray for our sanity as we embark on this sometime over the next month or so. It is one thing to walk downstairs and have the monitor turned off for naps. It is another to hear crying (in our case, screaming sometimes) across the hall or in our arms at 12, 2, and 4am! Parenting 101- making little decisions with big impacts every single day. This is one of the harder ones we have faced, I think.