No Abby, You're Doing it Wrong....

So Abby is on a Sleep Boycott. Lovely. We have no idea why...well actually I think we do...

We love the Miracle Blanket. But as you know we had to de-swaddle. So in order to get Abby to calm down and go to sleep we put her in her sleep sack, pop the paci in and gently hold her arms down like she's in the swaddle. And poof, she's out.

So the problem is that she hasn't really learned how to put herself to sleep. That means that everytime she wakes up, she needs us to go in, put her paci in and hold her arms down again. This is getting to be a problem.....

So out came the books.

OK let me back up and say that I am a reader. I read everything. If I have a problem or if someone I know has a problem, I go straight to the books. I can tell you all about BPA and baby bottles, the ins and outs of universal healthcare, and whether or not this bruise on my leg is from ramming into the coffee table last night or the first signs of leukemia.

Naturally we would have all the resources for raising a baby. And as everyone knows you can always count on being able to raise a baby by reading the books....right?!?!

So for the last few days, Abby has consistently gone to bed around 7 or 7:30 but needed us to help her to sleep over the next 2 hours. Then around 11 we gently wake her up to give her one last bottle (as recommended by our ped due to her "small size"). She rarely even wakes up at this point. Just eats in her sleep. Then she sleeps soundly until around 8. So that's great.

The problem is naps. And as the experts say, "naps are very important in the overall sleep schedule of a baby." ... oh ok. So Abby doesn't nap. She takes these little "2 seconds, I'm closing my eyes and DONE!" kinda naps.

The books say this is our problem. Bad naps = a rough time going to bed at night. So Greg and I sat on the couch last night from about 8:30 til 9:00pm working out our strategy. Books in hand.

Here's what we decided: Abby needs to keep her 7:30ish bed time. But she needs to get up around 7. Then be ready for her first nap around 9. Then play, eat, all that stuff until her next nap around 1sh. And maybe a short 3rd nap around 5. Perfect. So we decided to start right away. We wouldn't wake her anymore at 11. We'd let her tell us if / when she's hungry. We'd go to bed and probably hear from her around midnight and then we'd be ready to gently wake her for the day at 7. Great.

We even wrote our plan down so we were perfectly clear on the whole thing.

Guess who we forgot to invite to this important scheduling meeting....

Abby...

So what does she do. As soon as we finish writing this down, at 9pm, she wakes up. Crap. What do we do?!?! We literally looked at each other and said, this wasn't in the plan!!!! Luckily she just was chirping in her sleep and went right back to bed!!!!

So we went to bed. And Abby woke up around 11:30. Right on track!!!!

And then again at 4....

No Abby, you're doing it wrong!!!!

....back to the drawing board...