Sleep Update

I've been hesitant to give an update on Clara's sleeping patterns because I figured as soon as I wrote about our progress, she would revert back to her old ways. Last time I blogged about her sleeping in Month 2, she was sleeping in about 2 hour increments at night from the start of one feeding to the start of the next. Which means, that we were getting much less than 2 hour stretches of sleep since feeding, burping, and changing her took about a half hour. Well, during March (month 3) we have made significant progress (in our opinion). Most nights we get about a 3 to 3.5 hour stretch and then a 4 hour stretch. She's been getting very sleepy in the evenings around 8:30pm (we think she's figured out her days and nights now) so we start her bedtime routine then and usually put her to bed by 9pm. She changes it up on us, but she has been on one of two schedules: 1) wake-up at 12:30am and 4:30am or 2) wake-up at 2am and 5:30 or 6am. I prefer schedule #1 right now because Matt has the 10pm - 1am shift during the week. Monday night she woke up at 12:57am, right before the end of his shift. I looked at the clock and was like--that's my girl! Then I woke him up and went back to sleep.

I feel so much more rested during the day getting good chunks of sleep at night--it's wonderful. I am going to miss sleeping-in in the morning when I go back to work. That's going to be a jolt to both mine and Clara's systems. She usually sleeps until 9 or 10am. Sometimes I sleep-in too and sometimes I get up to get a few things done before she wakes. Matt and I are planning on getting up at 6am when I go back to work to get ourselves and her ready and so I can get to work a little earlier than normal.

Next thing to tackle is a nap schedule. She loves falling asleep in my arms during the day so I don't really "put her down" for naps yet. I'm hoping Trish can develop a nap time routine! I guess we'll see. For now, I'm still celebrating our progress at night.