Why doesn't everyone love sleeping as much as me?

Well, sleep training continues. I'm happy to report that after four days of concentrated effort, we're already starting to see some results. Not that things were that bad before (any baby who sleeps through the night is doing pretty well, I say), but our system for falling asleep had started to break down.

What we were doing was laying down with her, snuggling her tight (i.e. pinning down her arms) and softly singing to her. This initially worked great, especially compared to what we'd had to do before (stand up for hours and bounce her), but over the last month, laying down with Mom somehow started meaning "let's play"! I'd be stuck there with her for longer and longer periods (sometimes over an hour and a half), while she grinned and gurgled and chewed her toes. So after reading a couple different books (which frustratingly offered pretty different advice!), we started a new approach, where we go through a calming-down routine and then place her in her bed and leave the room. If she cries, we go back in and reassure her but try not to pick her up unless she really needs it.

Sleep training is such a tricky thing. On one hand, I am worried about getting her into bad habits (always trying to figure out where the "spoiling" line is) but on the other hand, I'm also aware of how far some North American child-rearing practices have strayed from how we evolved (as seen by looking at cultures around the world, especially hunter-gatherers). If babies have innate tendencies to be held and to sleep with their caregivers, why do we put them in "baby containers" (e.g. swings, bouncy chairs) and make them sleep alone in "cages"?

The answer, of course, is that we actually want to have lives and get things done in a day. And if the old system had've kept working, I would've done it for years (snuggling up with her was the best part of my day!), but she was obviously starting to have trouble falling asleep with me there.

It's funny, I always thought I'd be the kind of mom that would have no problem letting the baby "cry it out" for a couple nights to break bad sleep habits, but when it came down to it, I felt like I just couldn't break her trust by not responding to her cries. The thing that made it easier is that when she cries now, I can tell that it's "protest crying" - she kind of sputter-cries and then 2 mins later, is quiet and is cooing to herself. A couple of times she's gotten really worked up but I keep going back in every couple of minutes and reassuring her.

She hasn't liked the change - Tuesday night, it took 2 hours to get her to go down - it was originally supposed to be for a nap but by the end, it became her bedtime! But both yesterday and today, she woke up during her afternoon nap (i.e. after sleeping only 1/2 hour) and I waited before going in to her and she managed to fall back asleep by herself! This is great progress!

I know this is a lot of information but it's been our primary concern here for the past two weeks. Who knew sleeping was so hard?! I love sleeping - what's the problem?!

By the way, not pumping is great. I have so much time in my day now - I actually just washed baseboards for probably the first time in my life!

Here are a couple of pics:

Now that we're not spending all day getting the baby to sleep, we have more time for things like laundry:

Enjoying the nice weather on the porch:

Kisses from dad: