Night Weaning

About a week and a half ago, I started to night wean C. He had decided over the previous few days that I was a human pacifier. He liked it. I didn't. So right in the middle of my mastitis attack, right when I SHOULDN'T be undertaking this, I did. I actually just cut him off when he was done drinking instead of letting him pacify for the next 2 hours. He wasn't happy about it a few times but we made it through and the next night, it was much better. After a couple of nights of that, and after my mastitis cleared up, I started telling him that "mimi's go nigh-nigh" and he can have them again when the sun comes up (which is really rich seeing as how it's been raining and anything but sunny for so long I can hardly remember - except for yesterday:)). Anyway, he would still wake up a couple of times a night asking for mimis and each time, I would rock him and sing to him (still in bed) and each time, it would take less and less time. And then, he started waking up just once during the night asking for them and again, I tell him that mimis go nigh-nigh and he still doesn't like it but he calms down in about a minute. That's where we still are and I'm so happy about it. I know that he's going to give up that last waking soon and then we'll be sleeping all through the night. Wow! My favorite part of the whole thing is when I put them down at night, we all 3 lay together in bed and nurse and before we nurse I tell him "C, this is the last mimis until the sun comes up. After this, mimis go nigh-nigh okay?" And he replies in his little voice "Yep. Kay." Priceless.

As for S and his nighttime activities, he's doing it on his own. He mostly likes to be cuddled at night and several months ago, I just started giving him his blanket when he would wake up and he'd go back to sleep. Now, I still do that and sometimes he wants to be cuddled so we do that and go back to sleep. He likes to nurse once about 5am and I'm just fine with that.

Man, pretty soon I'll be getting so much sleep I'll hardly know what to do with myself! It's such a change from sleepig in 15 min - 1 hour increments which was our low point of about 10-11 months of age or so...exactly a year ago. How far we've come! I think because we've had every sleep "schedule" known to man, I'm able to be so grateful for what we have going now and what I hope is right around the corner. Yay!