Sleep!

Prior to Adeline's arrival, one of the most prevalent comments I heard was, "Get your sleep now because you'll never sleep again once she's here!" I thought my hourly trips to pee in the last months of pregnancy were good preparation for the lack of sleep to come, but I was in for a rude awakening!  From day one Adeline has been a good sleeper--even too good in the beginning, as she barely woke to eat. For the first eight weeks we woke her every two to three hours to eat. Based on the book Baby Wise I learned that by week five babies can begin to sleep for five hours at night, six hours at six weeks, seven hours at seven weeks and so on. I was certainly eager to arrive at week five! However, the doctors instructed us to continue waking her every two hours to eat to minimize her spit up and vomit. Thankfully, we got the green light from the GI to allow her to sleep for longer periods at night since she is continuing to gain weight. I'm pretty sure rays of light illuminated our doctor and angels began singing as he said the good news! So we began letting her wake us at night instead of us waking her for feedings. At first she stuck to the two to three hours and then last week she made it to four and five hours. The other night she slept for six hours and last night she slept for....wait for it...EIGHT hours!!! Hallelujah. She fell asleep at 9:30 P.M., made a couple of noises around two in the morning, which was quickly soothed by a pacifier, and then eventually work at 5:30 A.M. I only got up once to pump so it was a decent night of sleep. What a blessing!