Oh sweet sleep

Last weekend, Trent and I decided we'd finally had enough and were going to make Marie sleep through the night. She's eight months old now, so she's the youngest one we've made do that, but I just couldn't take it anymore. She was up every hour and a half every night all night long, and she was in our room, which made it worse. So Friday night, Trent camped out in the backyard with Sara and Will in our tent. It rained half the night so he had to keep the rain fly on, which made it extremely hot in there so he got even less sleep than I did. I slept in Sara's room because it's partially connected to our room (her bed's on the other side of our bathroom wall) so I'd be able to hear Marie best in there. She woke up for the first time at 11:49 p.m. I'd already decided I was going to let her cry for 20 minutes before going in there so I just lay there counting the minutes. At one point she started screaming bloody murder, which I could tell was because she was standing up. She has this habit of standing up in the crib and then getting stuck because she doesn't know how to get back down. It was a little hard not to go in there but I knew this was going to be better for everyone. So she just kept crying and kept crying...12:07....12:10...12:13.... 12:19 was the 20-minute mark when I'd go in there. 12:17:30 is when she stopped crying and settled down. Woo hoo!! Success!! I did still go in there to check on her and make sure she was breathing and she was doing the whole hiccuping thing but she was fine. She woke up a few other times during the night and just kind of whined for a few minutes and then went back to sleep. There was only that one crying episode.

The next night I had planned to sleep in Sara's room again and let her sleep in Will's room. I knew Trent would be home late because he was going to a baseball game with some friends from college so I figured he could just sleep in his chair in the living room. Sara really didn't want to sleep in Will's room so I just slept on the couch. Marie did much better this night. No bouts of screaming, just some whining occasionally, except for one point when she was awake for about an hour just whining. It was really annoying, especially since I'd just gotten back to sleep after Trent got home at 2:30.

After that night, we decided she could probably move out of our room and wouldn't disturb the kids too much. The plan is to eventually put her in with Sara but we didn't want to do that just yet since she's not fully sleeping through the night. So we put her crib in the playroom (our 4th bedroom that has been designated as the playroom where all the toys go. Much better for our sanity to have them all in one spot and out of the way). The first night she was in there, I fell asleep around 10:20 and didn't wake up until 3:50. It was bliss. If she cried, I didn't hear her. The next night, same thing. I slept for a very long period of uninterrupted time, and if she cried I didn't hear her. The next night I did hear her whine twice, but she went right back to sleep. It's been heavenly to have a night of uninterrupted sleep. Now if only I could get her to sleep later than 6:00 a.m....