Sleep? What's sleep?

I thought I was the luckiest parent alive when Jayde started sleeping through the night at about 6 weeks old. But as they say, "good things don't last forever!" ESPECIALLY when it comes to babies. I asked so many people why she wasn't sleeping well anymore and it would always be the same response, "just when you get used to a baby's schedule they change it on you." You would think that after so many weeks of not sleeping that she would finally fall back into her good sleeping habits but she hasn't. I mean, she has gotten some-what better. There was a point where she was waking up every 2-3 hours and it was horrible. Now she will wake up about 2 times a night, once at 11pm and once at 330am.

Jayde has never been a napper. When she was born everybody would always comment on how she was so aware and alert, and she was. She much rather stay awake and look at all the colors and lights instead of sleeping, that's how it has always been for as long as I remember. I have finally found a way to get her to nap like she is suppose to and that is to take a nap with her. Well,Ii don't necessarily have to take a nap but I definitely need to stay in the bed with her.It's great to have her nap, especially when I can sleep with her when I'm tired. I just wish that i can have her sleep during the day without me having to be here with her. I have things to do and sometimes the only time to do them is when she is napping. If I leave the room she will usually wake up in 10 minutes, its almost as if she senses me leaving the room. Sometimes I even catch her waking herself up just to make sure I'm still there and then falling back asleep.

A long time ago Keith and I talked about how we were going to sleep train Jayde. At first, I was totally against the "cry it out" method but now that we are having so much trouble with Jayde's sleep I agreed to try it. We set a date to start, which was May 18th, until i decided to move it back a little more. I'm taking a sleep solution class at the Day One Center in Walnut Creek on May 21st and I want to wait letting her cry it out until I know absolutely everything about it. I know the method itself isn't hard, it's just letting her figure out how to soothe herself to sleep in her crib while checking on her periodically. But i have questions regarding Jayde as an individual. I'm also so skeptical about starting this whole thing because I know I will be sitting here all night listening to her cry and it will break my heart.

In the mean time, there are some things that I am trying to accomplish before putting Jayde in her own room and sleep training her. I've been trying to be consistent with a bed time routine. Every night at 645 i give her a bath, put on her jammies, wipe down her gums, read her a bedtime story, feed her, and then put her to sleep. she usually actually falls asleep between 730 and 830 depending on what kind of day it was. I am also trying my hardest to find another way of getting her to sleep besides her falling asleep at the breast, which has been hard! Another thing that I've been working on is weaning her out of her swaddle. That by far is the hardest task. I've been trying to ween her out of that thing for the last few weeks it seems like. She will not sleep without it and its frustrating! Finally, i got her to sleep with one arm out. She has been sleeping that way for about a week now and in a few more weeks i'm going to try taking her other one out. Slowly but surely I will get her out of that swaddle!!

I'm hoping within the next month that Jayde will be sleeping beautifully throughout the night again and taking scheduled naps. Maybe not perfectly, but hopefully we will have some sort of improvement. I really wish I would have started her sleep training and a stricter schedule earlier, but i can't dwell on the past and can only move forward.