Sleep, Beautiful Sleep

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but Riley's latest milestone has inspired me to get back on the blogging horse. As you may have guessed from the title, Riley is sleeping through the night! Woo Hoo!

Since he was about 2 months old, Riley's been pretty consistent about nursing once a night. He'd wake up, start cooing a little bit and kicking his legs. He'd nurse for about 10 minutes then go right back to sleep. So, all things considered, I had it pretty good. At his 4 month appointment, the doctor suggested trying to wean him off his night feeding, but I thought it was a little early to force that on him and decided to wait.

Then, several nights ago, he started to wake up several times a night, sometimes only a couple hours after going to bed. Putting his pacy in his mouth immediately soothed him, but then he would wake up again an hour or so later. The first night, I just thought it was a fluke. Maybe he wasn't feeling very well or something. But then it happened again the next night. Uh oh. I certainly didn't like this new trend.

Then it dawned on me. . .pacy dependence. He'd never really been a big pacy guy, so it took me a while to realize that's what was going on. I read a few forums online, and most of them suggested taking the pacy away cold turkey during sleep times. I wanted to nip this little habit in the bud quickly, so I decided to give it a try.

I started Saturday night. We were at a birthday party that night and had taken Riley with us. He slept there for a couple hours, then we got him up and took him home. I nursed him again before putting him back to bed and decided I wasn't going to go to him if he cried before 5:00 am. Sure enough, he started fussing a few hours later, but only for a couple minutes. Not too bad. The next time he woke up, he just "talked" to himself for a while then went back to sleep. This was easy. The third time, he wasn't very happy about being ignored, but I stuck to my guns. He woke up Peter (which is hard to do) but eventually went back to sleep and slept until morning. I had survived my first night without too much pain.

Sunday night, we had a Christmas party, so again we put him down at our friends' house for a couple hours before taking him home. I nursed him again before putting him in his own bed and expected a repeat of Saturday night. Nope. He slept 10.5 hours straight! Awesome.

Monday night we were back on our regular routine. I nursed him and put him down at 7:30 and didn't hear from him again until 8:00 the next morning! WOW! However, even though he slept 12.5 hours, I didn't. First of all, I stayed up until past 1 am that night, which is very rare for me. Then I woke up a couple times to check on Riley, wondering if he was still alive (you mothers know what I'm talking about).

Then last night, Riley slept for 12.5 hours, and I slept for 9 hours STRAIGHT. That was awesome. So, by breaking him of his budding pacy habit, I apparently also broke him of his night feeding. Way to go, Riley!!!