The latest on sleep

We have been working on sleep for quite some time. At times it has been frustrating, and even agonizing. We opted for "gentle sleep coaching," but there was quite a bit more crying than I was happy with. We stuck with our plan, but had to get some reassurance from our sleep consultant couple of times. After describing how things were going, she suggested we read their article on temperament. As if we didn't know what temperament was. Apparently Maren has a slightly more difficult temperament when it comes to sleep coaching, even though she is an easy baby. So where some people see results in a couple of weeks, we have been doing this for basically a couple of months. However, all this hard work is starting to pay off. We are seeing some serious improvements in sleep!

For the last several nights, we have had pretty incredible sleep. Maren has woken up a couple of times in the night, but quickly put herself back to sleep (within a couple of minutes). And, for the last couple of days, we have had incredible naps. Maren's morning naps are starting to be more like what we have been told they "should" be like: she has been sleeping for ninety minutes or more. Her afternoon naps are a bit shorter, but still around maybe forty-five minutes. All of her sleeping is now in the crib. We do our routine, put her down, and within a couple of minutes she goes to sleep. Last night it took a bit longer for her to go down, because she was wrestling with her stuffed bunny, but she seems to actually really enjoy bedtime these days.

And, for the first time in a very, very long time, I am getting decent sleep. It is blissful :-)