[shortlette]

have you got any??

My Monday is almost over ... and it wasn't too bad.

[ashley5]

I dont really have any moans for today except for later this week it's suppose to get back down into the 40's and rainy all week:[ yesterday it hit 74 degrees! How can it go back down to the 40s. I can't wait for summer weather.

[-erin-]

raining and yucky today and I'm trying to get Juliet away from nursing as much during the night, which means it takes longer to get her back to sleep, which means less sleep for me

[ashley5]

Erin- I've been thinking of doing that with Ava sometime soon. But I've been so torn if/when I should start. Erin can I ask why you wanted to start weaning from night nursing as much? Sometimes I feel like she just needs that comfort to go back to sleep, but I don't know if that's it or if she's just hungry. Right now she gets up every 2-3hrs, and I was hoping she'd sleep longer the older she got.

[-erin-]

I'm still a bit torn about doing it, so I'm mostly just trying to wait her out to see if she'll put herself back to sleep instead of me going to get her. I haven't started anything too intense yet.

From 3-6 months or so she was great, she only got up once a night. Since then she's up 2-3 times a night on average, 4-5 on a bad night and occasionally once. I want her to sleep more and not nurse for my own sanity so I can get better sleep.

It does seem more like comfort nursing and not eating for nutrition, but it's hard to tell sometimes. She is also more distractable during the day and isn't taking as much in her bottles while I'm at work, so if she needs it I don't want to take it away.

So I'm trying to limit to one "good" nursing in the middle of the night and the other times she wakes, if she's just fussing I wait her out (sometimes she goes back to sleep), when it turns to crying I get her and try to just rock her and comfort her for a bit, but I usually end up nursing. I've been limiting those nursing times to 5 mins. I don't know if what I'm doing is "right" but I figure I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

[ashley5]

Yep I've been thinking of trying something just like what you're doing. Sometimes she wakes up after 1 1/2 and I wait to see if she'll go back to sleep or not, if not then I nurse her. But she's been getting up 3-4x a night, and it's tiring sometimes. Plus it'd be nice for her to sleep longer, but I dont want to push something she's not ready for if she's actually hungry. And it is hard to tell the difference sometimes if she's hungry or just fussy.

[shortlette]

it's tough to know what's best when they're still little but when Ollie was still feeding every 2 hours at 14 months I finallly admitted that DH was right and we had to do something. We dollowed this method and it's amazing how quickly it worked. The first night was awful ... he cried for 2 hours non stop. DH told me that he was almost at the point of coming in and telling me to "just feed him" several times, but it got easier. It's so hard to know what to do and even harder when you're having to function on reduced sleep.

http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

[-erin-]

ok I'm afraid to jinx it, and it's not from anything that I've done, but Juliet slept through the whole night last night, about 7:20 - 6:45! I woke up at 5am amazed she hadn't woken yet. I wanted to check on her but she is a fairly light sleeper so I didn't. I didn't fall back asleep though and my alarm went off at 6. She has done this 4-5 times before... when we were away for a long weekend just before 3 months she slept the whole night each night and the night after her 6 month shots she slept through. So this is the first time since then! I hope hope hope it sticks!

[ashley5]

Well that's great to hear! Ava had a much better night last night and slept four hours straight and only woke up twice:} YAY for better sleep last night and being able to function better. She did wake up after an hour of sleeping, but I let her fuss a little and she fell back to sleep. Now is a rough time and I dont want to her to fuss too much b/c she's sick a little. All congested again, has a nasty dry cough and doesn't seem to be coughing anything up, and she's only eating half the amount of what she normally does. She also felt so warm all weekend and was sweaty but never had a temp. So today I'm taking her to the doctor. It's probably nothing, but I'll feel better if the doc looks her over. Needless to say all she wants is to be held, and gets up every hour coughing:[