Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Great Sleep Experiment - 30 day results

We have seen definite progress on the sleep front! Here were Pumpkin's sleep statistics from last night:

Asleep time - 7:50 p.m.
Awake time - 5:15 a.m.
Total wakings - 2
Longest sleep span - 3 hrs 15 min
Total sleep - 8 hrs 45 mins
Average time to get back to sleep: 20 minutes (she ate both times she woke up, and then went straight back to sleep)

(You can see the original sleep statistics here, the ten-day results here, and the twenty-day results here. No one said this was a quick sleep fix!)

I think she wanted to sleep longer, but I couldn't get her to go back to sleep after 5:15. She dozed in my arms for another 15-20 minutes, and then she stood up in my lap and started looking around. She didn't cry when she woke up- I woke up to hear the funny little grunting noise she makes when she's working on something coming over the monitor. When I went in to check on her, she was standing in her crib, which looked very cute, since she was still wearing her sleep sack.

I don't know if any of the no-cry sleep solutions are responsible for the better sleep. We did move to putting her down quite awake, and just patting her/stroking her head to get her to go to sleep. She wasn't too impressed with this plan the first couple of nights we tried it, and I still have to pick her up a couple of times and calm her back down most nights. However, I think I have heard her wake up and go back to sleep a couple of times. So maybe this worked?

I also started nursing her at day care when I pick her up. I had dropped the after work nursing, because it seemed too late and therefore liable to interfere with dinner by the time I got home from work. I added the nursing at day care three days ago. The first night I did that, she slept better than she has in months- she only woke twice, and slept more than four hours before waking the first time and more than three hours before the second waking. This was the start of the improved sleep we're seeing. So maybe the extra nursing is what is important?

Sleep deprived parents are the most superstitious people on the planet. We aren't changing anything as long as she keeps sleeping!

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