Night Night

One thing that we are blessed with is that Violet doesn't have much difficulty going to bed. Is it the books I read, the "schedule" we implemented? Is it the routine we follow? Who knows. But even when she was smaller, I had a five minute limit on letting her cry it out, and rarely did she ever take the entire time period. I would sit at the top of the steps outside her room, waiting for her to fall asleep (too lazy to keep running up and down... I would just take a book with me and wait).

Right now, our bedtime routine involves a bath (about every other night... again, too lazy. Yikes, I'm starting to make myself sound bad!), putting on pj's, getting a bottle, and then going straight into the crib, usually half awake. Once in her crib, Violet rolls herself over and conks out, generally before we've even left the room. Once she's down, I breathe a sigh of relief and get on with my evening, confident we won't hear a peep out of her. Gone are the nights when we tiptoed around, holding our collective breath that she'd stay asleep and let us have a few minutes to ourselves.These days, we know we're good to go.

Ah, the good old days of sleeping anywhere, anytime.

So imagine my dismay when my normally great sleeper suddenly started waking up in the middle of the night. For a while there, Matt and I were both getting up at least once and stumbling upstairs to find a distraught Violet sitting up in her crib, wailing to herself in the dark. This is the problem when your child can sit themselves up - they sit themselves up! I don't know if she can't figure out how to lay back down or what, but the minute we would appear in the room, the cries would turn desperate and generally we'd be suckered into picking her up and bringing her downstairs to our bed.

A word about this. Letting your child sleep in your bed is a terrible habit to start. And habits form very quickly at this age. After three nights in a row of this behavior, I knew we were in trouble. But it's so hard not to pick her up when she's so sad (and we're so exhausted).

Still not listening....!

So I'm opening the floor for any advice you might have. In my weekly baby development email, this past week was all about napping (Violet's terrible napping skills will have to be addressed in a separate post) but it did include the tidbit that whenever babies approach a big milestone (learning to crawl, pull up, etc) their sleep patterns might get disrupted "temporarily". (And wow, that weekly email is tracking perfectly with Violet's development! Spooky!) She's definitely getting the whole pulling up skill down pat, so perhaps that's what the sleep issues have been all about? I don't know.

Things have gotten slightly better over the last few nights. We're down to only comforting her twice a night now, we haven't had to rescue her out of the crib in a few days, and last night she was back asleep before Matt or I even made it all the way to her room. I'm hoping we're getting over this hump, because it's one thing to be up all night when you're snowed in and have nothing better to do during the day, but with school back in session come Monday, these parents need some sleep!

In your dreams...