All Through the Night

A miracle happened last night.

I’ll tell you all about it in a minute, but first some back story. I have been co-sleeping with the girls in my bed since the hospital. I didn’t intend to do it; I had a cradle and two cribs set up when we arrived home.

I’ve talked on this before in my post about Practicing Safe Co-Sleeping. It ended up being the best situation for us, and I am of the belief that the world would be a little better if all babies spent at least the first 6 months of life sleeping within arms reach of a parent.

I began to think about transitioning them to a crib around 10 months, mainly because we were quickly outgrowing my double bed. To be honest, if I had a king sized bed they’d probably be bedsharing with me until they were 2. One thing I knew is that they wouldn’t be ready to transition until they could hunt around for their water bottle in the middle of the night and stick it back into their mouth unassisted…my girls love their mid-night wawa!

I was wandering Barnes and Nobles Thursday in between lunch and dinner with friends and I thumbed through “The No Cry Sleep Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley and “The Baby Sleep Book” by Dr. Sears. They told me things that my common sense already knew, yet somehow seeing it in writing seemed to empower me.

Yesterday, I decided I would transition them to cribs…for realz!

I tried to transition once or twice before…after the first cry, I gave up. Not yesterday! I created a “sleep folder” with free printouts from Pantley’s website. I developed a “Sleep Plan” and had worksheets to track their night wakings, because surely they’d have at least 5, right???

Wrong! 🙂

I gave them a bath, changed them, laid them down in their crib with their night bottle and read them that book about the brown rabbits. Halfway through, they were fast asleep. This was 7:50pm.

Around 8:20pm came the first wake up, in unison. Marvel wailed and banged her head against the bars of the crib, in the dramatic fashion that she displays whenever she is displeased. This has earned her the nickname “Moody Marvel”. On the other hand, Eloise was standing holding the crib bars and happily shaking her buttbutt back and forth.

To get them back to sleep, I did what some would call a “modified cry it out” except that they never really cried and I still don’t know what the “it” is that those crazy cry it out people are referring to.

Every 3-5 minutes I went back in, gave them each a hug and kiss and said goodnight. They fussed in between, but never constant. They would fuss and then pause, fuss and pause. After 3 times of this, I had their Poppy go in and do the same thing. I set a timer for 5 minutes later, thinking they would fuss and I’d go in again.

But 5 minutes passed….no sound.

At 8:40 I peeked in and saw my two angels, fast asleep!

And guess what?

They slept until 7:30 this morning.

I’m on an “I ROCK!!!” parenting high right now. Surely it can’t be this easy…i’m expecting a little more trouble tonight. But who knows? Stay tuned.