Nighttimes

Limelet has actually been doing a lot better, faster, with night weaning than I expected (feared?).  

I have been using a modified version of Dr. Jay Gordon's technique .  It is modified in that I am taking longer about it and doing it in a less cry-y fashion; I am being flexible and following my gut.  We did do the first three nights as per instructions.  

The first night did involve crying and wakefulness, but not nearly as much as I thought it might.  Initially he cried his little heart out when told that the nursies were sleeping.  However, I discovered that he calmed down and was satisfied thereafter with being held/carried with his head on my shoulder, much as TheLimey has always done to put him to sleep.  Limelet has never previously accepted this form of ensleeping* from me, so I was surprised he did accept it.  I was awake a lot that night getting him back to sleep.  The following couple nights, he did not cry about nursies sleeping, but accepted the shoulder instead.  

I was a bit worried about that, because one thing I actually worked at doing (a long time ago) was getting him to accept lying down and nursing to sleep instead of being carried and nursing to sleep, so at least I could lie down and semi-sleep, too.  I didn't want to regress and have to now get out of bed each time he awoke during the night.  However, I this fear didn't materialize.  In the nights following, he accepted just being held and rocked or wobbled for a few minutes while I sat up, and he went back to sleep immediately.  I was able to then segue that into me lying down and holding him on my chest, followed by rolling over and just having my arm under his head.

Because this was all working well and moving rapidly towards my goal of having him stay asleep without nursing/carrying, I decided to just continue (relatively) gradually instead of moving into the next Gordon phase which would likely involve another few nights of crying and misery.  

And in fact it's been going quickly: just 10 days ago, Limelet was still nursing back to sleep 3-5 times per night, meaning I awoke several times per night.  Night before last I awoke only twice and he fell back into deep sleep both times with very minimal intervention and within just a couple of minutes.  During the daytimes he comments happily that the nursies are awake.

I'm not counting last night as a real setback, since when he stirred at 3 or so and was very flippy, it turned out that he was sick, and threw up.  Poor little thing.  He got to have the nursies wake up after that.  But I was still awake from 3 to 4:30.

*Neologism!