Raising Bean
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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Sleeping Through The Night

When did she start sleeping through the night?

A question I've been getting a lot recently from moms with younger babes. Reply: Ha! 11.5 months old, and on really good nights I'll get a five hour stretch. "They" say that five hours is sleeping through the night. I'm not sure who "they" are, but my definition is more like seven hours, maybe six. Five is just too short to function off of.

Now, we're a bedsharing family. Bean sleeps snuggled in right next to me, every night. Unless she gets to hot, then she sprawls out on her daddy's side of the bed. Luckily my husband works night shifts so half the week she has plenty of room to spread out if she wants to.

Here's why we bedshare..

From 3-4.5 months she was waking up once per night. We did no sleep training, no cry it out, nothing. It's dust how she naturally slept. Around 4.5 months she started teething, and the darn things started getting her up every two hours. I'm lucky in the fact that she doesn't stay awake, she nurses and goes right back to sleep within ten minutes. I think if she stayed awake for awhile I'd be more tempted to sleep train her. I did read The No Cry Sleep Solution, which I loved! And it helped until teething kicked back in. Our normal routine, she she wakes up, is for me to sit up, slide her to where I was sleeping, then I flop over to where she was sleeping and offer her the other boob. We're both back to sleep within a minute of our midnight dance routine. It works for us. I don't feel exhausted in the mornings, when my husband is in bed with us he isn't disturbed. It works, we love it, she'll move to her own bed whenever she's ready. I'm in no rush!


She has been waking up three to four times per night for the past few months. She's also been working on the outside four incisors coming through, which I blame. Now that all four have finally broken through the surface she's waking up twice throughout the night. Which means I'm waking up at 6:30 am because my body's not used to so much consecutive sleep. Curse and a blessing, I suppose.

Final thoughts
If I weren't bedsharing I'd probably be more proactive about sleep training.
She still eats every time she nurses throughout the night. Yes, I know babies can est in their sleep. That's not my argument. If she weren't getting nutrition, and helping keep my supply up it'd be a different story.
For now I'm letting our little bean sleep with us, and nurse whenever she wants to throughout the night, until she's had enough. Or until it hits a point that it no longer works for one of the three of us.

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