Sleeping through the night

This week, Bas surprised us all by sleeping through the night (from his 11:30 feed until 6:30 in the morning). Of course, it was a one-time deal, as the next night he was up at 3:30 again for his second feed, but still, it gave me hope!

The interesting thing is that the all-nighter came in the second night of my new sleep-training regimen for Bas. I decided at the beginning of the week that since Bas seemed to be waking up every two hours and needing either a soother or my boobs to get him back to sleep that it was time to teach him to learn to fall asleep on his own.

So I decided to cold turkey him on the soother and to commit to a routine: bathtime and a bottle of breastmilk before bedtime, and then no soother at all in the crib, and most importantly, putting him down in his crib awake.

I'm not going to lie, this involved quite a bit of wailing, but Bas quickly figured out that when he's tired, he just can't fight it. So, although it broke my heart to not pick him up, I persevered, sometimes stroking his chest or holding his hand through the bars of the crib as I sat beside him, and sometimes singing him "You are my sunshine."I quickly learned, however, that it is best to leave him with no distractions and to wait for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (There's nothing worse than waking your baby up by going in just as he was about to drop off!).

So, while this is a painful process, I am confident that Bas is the better for it (as he demonstrated with his all-night sleep), and I know that Sven and I will be the better for it too, as bringing Bas into bed with us at 4:00 in the morning when he wouldn't settle was not a solution we wanted to subscribe to any longer!