Saturday, April 23, 2011

First night of night weaning

The first night was a success! Much better than I expected. The plan was to feed her at 10:30 before I went to bed. I’d wake up to feed her again at 2 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. Mark would handle any other wakeups prior to 7 a.m.

She woke up only once for Mark and he only had to do a five-minute check. She was already back asleep before the ten minute check. With my earplugs, I managed to sleep through this.

I woke up motivated and enthusiastic with the hope that by getting up and feeding her as scheduled, I was reducing the amount of middle-of-the-night wake-ups I’d have in the future.

In sum, Mark only had to get up once. I got up twice between 11:15 p.m. and 8 a.m. and feel like a new person. Willow awoke smiling and happy.

They say the first night is the hardest, but it wasn’t bad at all. Hopefully it will only get better from here. I look at my Trixie Tracker chart and last night was the first sane-looking one ever. While others had lines of feedings all through the night, this one had longer feedings with longer spaces in between. Aaahhh!

Once we’ve eliminated one of these remaining feedings, we’ll start working on transition from the swing, which will probably be a bit tougher in the initial nights.

So far though, so good. I see more sleep on my horizon and it’s a wonderful thing.

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