A Pleasant Surpise

Jordyn has never been a great sleeper but as her mom I take full blame! I did many of the things that you are not "supposed" to do. It wasn't that I was not informed because I had read all about sleep in several books. But when Jordyn finally came I quickly was doing everything opposite of what the "professionals" said. I let her sleep in bed with us, I rocked her until she finally fell asleep, I didn't put her down drowsy but still awake, and every time she woke up in the night I fed her just so she would go back to sleep quickly.

Well I have been trying to break her of the many habits that I have trained her to do. She sleeps in her crib, she goes to bed awake, etc. but I still have been feeding her every time she wakes in the night. The past week the nights have been HARD... to say the least. We have prayed, I have read more books, I have googled info... you get the picture! So on Sunday night we went to bed and Jordyn woke up FIVE times that night. Yesterday I was at the end of my rope, I was tired and really knew what I needed to do to break her habit but wasn't really ready to do it. But by the end of the day I didn't care how hard it was going to be I was not getting up FIVE times anymore.

So I decided that this would be my plan... If she woke up and started to cry I was going to let her cry for ten minutes, go in and calm her down and walk out. I would repeat this process until she would fall asleep. I KNEW it was going to be a long night but I told myself that I would do this "program" for a week and if nothing changed then we would try something else.

I put her in bed at 7:00 like I always do. She usually has NO problem going to bed at night. But she cried and cried and I calmed and comforted and she fell asleep around 7:40. I thought to myself, "WOW it is going to be a long night!" She slept fine until about 10:45 (ten minutes after I had got in bed) I looked at the clock and told myself, "give her ten minutes" those ten minutes went by and she was back to sleep!

As the night went by she kept sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. At 4:45 AM I was worried because she has never slept longer than four hours at night. I went in saw that she was breathing and left. We woke up at 7:30 AM.

And to our pleasant surprise Jordyn shocked us both and slept 12 straight hours!!

Thank you Jordyn.