On Tuesday we made the ginormous mistake of thinking we needed to start sleep training Beia. Our goal was to eliminate her waking up around 11pm/12am since she hasn't been hungry at that time, yet wasn't able to get herself back to sleep without the paci. Tuesday night started out ok, and we were able to get her to sleep by her usual bedtime of 7:30pm—but without the paci using a modified CIO approach. But then Beia woke up at 1am. And she cried. And cried. We came in every 10 minutes to soothe her but to no avail. Eventually we gave in and gave her the paci. She fell asleep but the entire day was a wreck (for all of us) as a result.
After consulting other parents and much discussion, we decided that we were over-thinking the matter of the paci. Our new goal is now to optimize the amount of sleep Beia is getting, and hoping that everything else (ie. the 11pm/12am wake up) would sort itself out. So last night we put Beia to bed a 1/2 hour early (with paci)—and she slept straight through to her 2:30am feed! She then went right back to bed (sans paci) until waking up for the day at 6:00am. This is an hour earlier than we'd like, but still considered a success!
So far she is having a much happier day than yesterday, as are we. Hopefully this isn't merely a result of her being over-tired yesterday, and we are going to try the earlier bedtime again tonight. In fact, we are going to try moving her bedtime up a bit more—to either 6:30pm or 6:45pm. Crossing fingers and toes...
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