The Fickle Thing Called Sleep

First of all, I understand there are many opinions on what healthy baby sleep looks like. I understand that. I am talking about what has worked, and hopefully will work, for our baby and our family. Every family is different and has different needs, let's not judge one another.

I'm doing it. I'm jinxing all of us by writing about Audrey's sleep habits. The thing is, I really need some blog therapy on this one. Hopefully I won't be sorry I did this.

Here's the thing, Audrey has been a really good sleeper from day one. In fact, we often had to wake her to eat at night when she was a wee little thing. She even started sleeping through the night before she was 3 months old. It was glorious we were riding high. Feeling like we might know what the heck we are doing. We were putting her down awake, she was falling asleep on her own. Going from 7:30 or 8 until 8 am with one dream feed around 10:30.

Heaven.

We savored every night for fear it would be the last. That was a smart thing to do.

Because at about 4 months changes started creeping in. She started waking around 4 am wanting to eat. We obliged feeling she was probably having a growth spurt, and really she is quite young and eating once at night seems reasonable. We were OK with this new wake once to eat go right back to sleep thing. A bit more tired but OK with it none-the-less. We give her a bottle at night so we can trade nights. It was OK.

Then the time she woke started getting sporadic some nights 2 am some nights 4, but still only once a night and still back to sleep pretty quick, so again we felt OK. Until...

Almost 5 months when she has started to get really good at getting out of her swaddle. Which translates to waking up every time she gets out because "oh crap I'm unswaddled! what do I do with my hands". The easy answer is leave them in the damn swaddle, but alas you can't reason with babies.

This means things have regressed. There has been more rocking to sleep and lying down asleep than I am comfortable with. She is waking up more than once, which is too much for me. I have high standards, I know. But we like to sleep in this house. Something has to change.

You once were so happy to sleep all swaddled up.

It seems the only thing to do is wean her from that swaddle. Crap, that's not going to be easy. I think she will like it once she figures it out, she has been sucking her thumb a lot lately. But I fear the learning curve will be high.

So starting tonight we are going to try to get that baby sleeping with her arms free.

I am terrified.

JT is terrified.

We like to sleep. There may be earplugs involved (for the parent who is not on duty). We may be going to bed at 9 again. But it is all in an effort to get that baby sleeping well again.

Please send sleepy, peaceful thoughts to our house. I think we are going to need them.

You will be just as happy with free arms, right?