Sweet Consecutive Hours

Aiden has been sleeping through the night since last Friday. For the most part. That means I had EIGHT HOURS OF CONSECUTIVE SLEEP. For the first time in over two months. Amazing.

I read in a few different places that babies under two months old should not go longer than five hours without feeding, so we waited until this past weekend to let Aiden sleep through the night. I used to set my alarm to wake me up at 2am to feed him. We decided to wait until the weekend to see what he would do when left to his own terms. Thankfully, he slept right through the night until 30 minutes before his first morning feeding. We kept him busy for 30 minutes and fed him right on schedule!

Since then, he has mostly kept to his nine hours of sleep. With two exceptions: last night and the night before. For some reason, we decided that we would start putting Aiden to bed without swaddling him for the FIRST TIME EVER. This morning I realized that we are changing too many things at once for the little guy. Back to the night time swaddling it is!! Or at least until he gets used to sleeping through the night.

Each night, he woke up at 1:30am. It took a couple tries of throwing the pacifier back in his mouth to get him to go back to sleep. But that's enough to wear me out for the rest of the day. I am DRAGGING BUTT today. Every time I have to stand up, it takes me about 30 seconds of mental preparation to work up the energy. If I wasn't still breastfeeding I think I would find some nurse willing to give me a permanent caffeine IV drip.

This next weekend we are going to move Aiden to his nursery at night. Up to this point, he has been sleeping in the co-sleeper in our bedroom. He's turning into quite the noisy sleeper and it's keeping me from getting solid sleep. We will still have the baby monitor in use, but hopefully every teeny tiny movement on his part won't bother me as much if he's in the next room. I figure we can change things for him slowly over time. That way maybe he'll be more willing to accept the changes.

I do enjoy having Aiden in our room. It's so easy to roll over and pop that pacifier back in his mouth. And he's right there anytime I want to look at him. Like when he's having one of his horrific nightmares that makes him scream out loud. I can just sit up and make sure he's alive still and all is well! Seriously, he does this. It freaks me out. He never wakes up from it though. ???

On the other hand, I look forward to being able to turn on the light when we go to bed at night. Right now, I get dressed for bed by the light of our little plug-in nightlight. We still watch TV in our room, that doesn't bother Aiden. We still talk in the room, but we are quieter than normal. For the most part, these are all things Aiden can tolerate. We just aren't willing to risk it at night. If we wake him up during the day, I have more energy to get him back to sleep for the rest of his nap. Night time is a different story. Mommy has to get up at 5 for work!!