A month or so ago now, we moved Maia into her own bedroom. Prior to that, we’d had her in her bassinet (and then her crib when she became more mobile) in our bedroom, on my side of the bed. But we hit a point where she began waking up and wanting to nurse for just a few seconds every 1.5-2 hours, and I was pretty much losing my mind — especially when I’d lay her back down to sleep, crawl into bed, and the creaking mattress or rustling sheets woke her right back up.
As much as I liked having her in the bedroom, right there when she wanted to nurse, I knew it was time to make our bedroom ours again, and give her space of her own. Maybe, I thought, if she woke up lightly from sleep and I wasn’t lying right there, she would soothe herself back to sleep. And I mean, I missed having conversations with Chris as we snuggled into bed.
The first night was horrible, but in a really understandable way. Having not really slept in the nursery in a long while, Maia woke up and freaked out over not knowing where she was. It looks and smells different in there, and Mama & Dada aren’t right next to the crib… so every time she woke up (yep, every 1.5-2hrs) she would start sobbing in this deep, heart-wrenching, ohmigod I’m scared kind of way. I felt horrible for her, but once I picked her up she would calm down quickly, and she only needed to nurse two of those times.
The second night was still a little rough, but less so; a few less wakings (already a victory!) and more of a complaining, angry tone to her cries (“really guys? you still have me in here?”) meant that overall, we all got more sleep. I won’t lie, the fact that I have to get out of bed and walk into the other room, nurse her, and walk back to my bedroom is an annoyance, but it’s something I’m willing to deal with.
By the third night, we were down to her waking up thrice a night, and there is where we’ve generally stayed — and yes, this is a victory. Maia goes to bed reliably at 7pm, nurses sometime between 9-11pm, wakes up at 1:30am and 5:30am for a feeding, then gets up for the day between 7 and 8am. I would desperately like to eliminate that 9-11pm feeding, or barring that, the 1:30am one, but for now I’m stumped as to how to do that. There are nights when she’ll skip one of those on her own, and once she even slept straight from 7pm-3am before wanting to nurse, so at least I know it’s something she can do.
My goal right now is to reliably get 6 hours of sleep in a row for myself. I know that’s asking a lot, since it’s happened once and that was the night she wasn’t even home, but I would pretty much fall over myself with happiness. I don’t usually go to bed til midnight, so if she were to wake up at 1am and then 7:30am, that’d be good enough for me.
Overall though, moving her into the nursery has been really successful and we’re all getting more rest, which is important… especially because she DOESN’T STOP MOVING all day long!
I know, what a boring post, right?
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