Zara vs. Sleep

Zara has been sleeping through the night more or less since she was two months old. It wasn't anything special I did....it was all Zara and her being the most awesome baby ever. And when people would ask how we were sleeping with a newborn in the house, David and I would look at each other with smug little laughs and say, "We get lots of sleep! Our baby sleeps through the night." We felt bad for those poor parents who's children were just not as awesome as ours. Getting up several times during the middle of the night? No thank you.

I'll admit it. I was proud. My baby was a perfect sleeper.

And then, suddenly, she wasn't.

For the last two weeks, she's been doing things she hasn't done since she was two weeks old. First, she just would not fall asleep. Every night it seemed to get later and later and later; most nights she wouldn't fall asleep until midnight. I changed a few things to get her on a more consistent bedtime routine and she started going to sleep earlier but then she would wake up every two hours for the rest of the night, wanting to eat. A few times, it took over two hours to get her to go back to sleep again. (Which makes for one very unhappy mama.)

So David and I sat and stewed about what to do. How did our prefect baby and our perfect sleeper turn into a terrible sleeper in a matter of two weeks? I have some theories, all of which are probably totally incorrect.

We thought, maybe she's finally ready to eat solid foods. And though I was relunctant to do it (because why was my milk suddenly not enough?), we started feeding her a little rice cereal. But that didn't really change anything.

Then we thought that maybe she just wasn't comfortable sleeping in the pack 'n play in our room anymore. She was pretty big for it. But I was really, really hesistant to put her in her crib. She'd be so far away from me and I like having her close by. I much prefer to have in my bed with me but now that David is not working nights anymore, the bed gets a little crowded with three. (Time to upgrade to a king-size, I think.) We'd been using her crib as our changing area but we finally went out and bought a changing table (they only had one option at the furniture store) and I prepped her crib for the sleeping.

Two nights ago was her first night in the crib.

At first, she slept pretty well. She slept for about 5 hours (I didn't....I was getting up every hour to check on her). She woke up around 3:30 a.m. and I nursed her back to sleep. I put her back in her crib but she woke up again. So I rocked her back to sleep and put her in her crib but she woke up again. So I just took her back to bed with me because I wasn't interested in spending another hour trying to get her back to sleep.

So her first night in the crib was better but still not great.

But last night, I put her in her crib around 10 p.m. (after falling asleep elsewhere) and she slept soundly until 6 a.m. (Though once again, I got up nearly every hour to check on her.)

So perhaps the curse is broken and she'll go back to being our perfect little sleeper. But if not, I guess that's okay too.

I suppose I still need some lessons in humility, after all.