Ingrid’s always been a pretty decent sleeper, never got days and nights mixed up, can be put down drowsy, doesn’t ever nurse to sleep, unless she’s been sleeping. (Nursing is definitely a wake-up thing, not a nurse-down thing, here…)

Until recently.

When she was teething, she had two crazy nights of heavy nursing, but then slipped back to her more usual early am, and later early am, feeds. Not a huge deal. But for the last ten days or so, ho.ly.fuck. She’s basically started to reverse-cycle a bit with as many nursing sessions at night as during the day. And if I were gone from her for a significant part of the day, I might not be so anxious to right-cycle her back, but my very part-time job means that I am away from her for a max of 1.5 waking hours, and she gets maybe 3 bottles a week, and she has plenty of access to me during the day.

Her naps continue to be short, 3 or 4 with a duration of 20-40 minutes each, which sucks for ME, because that is not a time that I can really get anything DONE, you know? So, we now have A Plan. Part 1 is "crib for naps," which went fine for her last nap. Before, she was napping downstairs — on me, then in her swing, then on the couch, then on a mat on the floor… but now, the crib. And that’s okay.

The second part will be more challenging. We have been served very well by following our instincts here, and will continue to do so, and at this point, my instinct is that she doesn’t need to have at me 5+ times a night, not when I’m RIGHT HERE all day long, and she previously didn’t need that much sustenance overnight. I’m not exactly into CIO, but I think we can move past MAWN. (Might as Well Nurse) For her wakeups, typically Dave responds first, re-paci’s her, she spits it out, and he comes to me and says "I think she’s hungry!" Again, served us great when she was waking at 230 and 5, not so great when it’s every hour and a half, because you end up with a fried mama and daddy, and that doesn’t fly either.

Operating on our go-with-the-gut philosophy, tonight Dave will be on soothing duty until midnight or so (depending on her last nurse — basically 5-6 hours, which I know she can handle) and then I’ll open up the dairy bar after that. I have no expectations of "sleeping through the night," really, just more of a "do your eating when I’m awake, mmkay?" shifting. As far as Dave’s soothing methods, it’s up to him. I’m actually much more able to let her cry now, than he is, but I feel like I have a good sense of what cries are serious, too. (The "Waaaaah [pause, wait to see if I hear mama’s footsteps, no? well then…]waaaaah!" cries are actually kind of funny, and clearly not life or death, and those don’t bug me. A baby who cried so hard she puked or whatever? that would bug.

Sleep is one of those hugely charged issues, like breastfeeding vs formula, so I hesitated to even post this, but I know that everyone deals with it in their own way, hopefully one that works best for them. And that’s what we’re doing here, what works best for us, hopefully. If I didn’t feel, on an instinctive level — not as the result of outside pressure — that this was the right thing for right now, I wouldn’t do it. That being said, if anyone has anything else to share (in a non-dogmatic, super-incendiary way) about how they handled such issues, I’m all ears. You can comment, or email if you want greschyaATgmail. Oh, and wish us luck, eh?