Sleep

The whole nap/sleep thing with Ellis has improved tremendously.

It's taken some sacrifice on our part -scheduling outings around her nap times and no longer staying out at night (either early dinners out or we eat in) so she can routinely go to bed by 830pm.

Now she (almost daily) naps 3 times in the day - 10am, 1 pm and 3 or 4pm for 40 minutes to an hour, and is in bed around 8 or 830pm. She can sleep all the way till 7.30 the next morning, occasionally waking up once in between. That usually happens when she's lost her pacifier which helps her to sleep. So we pop it back and she's off to la la land again. After enduring a couple nights of discomfort with engorgement, my milk supply has regulated so I don't need to pump during the night. Which is great because finally, I can get a straight 7 to 8 hours of sleep!

The whole sleep training process happened quite randomly. It wasn't any particular method that worked - but I found that if I sucessfully got her down for one nap, the subsequent one was easier, and so on and so forth. Things just improved gradually over time. Routine was one of the most important aspects, I feel - making sure the naps occured around the same time each day and watching for sleep cues (rubbing of eyes, crankiness etc).

We started with the cry-it-out method but it didn't work too well because she could go on for 2 hours without letting up. I found her crying really jarring on my nerves and worse, once that happened, any subsequent naps were impossible - she would somehow work herself up into such a frenzy that she couldn't settle down for any further naps.

Now I rock/hold her to help her to sleep which takes about 20 minutes. With the help of a pacifier, I can then put her down for a nap in her cot. This was previously impossible as she would struggle and cry the minute she hit the mattress. I decided I'd rather spend some time doing this and get 1 hour of uninterrupted me-time and a rested and happy baby rather than dealing with 2 hours of screaming, crying and a super cranky baby at the end of it.