A Night Of Rest

This has been a busy week for our family. This whole week has been VBS prep week at the church building, which means that Jeremy has been gone from sun-up to sun-down. This is also the week that I chose to really concentrate on sleep scheduling. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I wanted me to be the one to do it since it requires "constant vigilance" (a line from Harry Potter) 

I am happy to say that Greta is still only waking one time at night. Last night she went 5.5 hours between her night feeding and her middle of the night feeding. She really does not need to go more than that between feedings at this point because it could possibly lower her blood sugar resulting in a lethargic baby who will not give me hunger cues. Yesterday I applied the "cry-it-out" method at her afternoon naptime. It was so hard to hear her cry, but she eventually stopped and passed into a deep sleep state. She was much easier to get to sleep at every feeding after that and has been a much easier baby to handle today. She is easy in general, but I am trying to train her to sleep and to self-soothe. Anyway, she is still very young and this is, of course, a work in progress. We will continue to work on sleep training until she is sleeping through the night (which will hopefully happen between 6-8 weeks)

As with any parent of a newborn, we have been pretty tired. I will reserve the word "exhausted" because it is not fair to use it in our case. Greta is a good sleeper and eater, so I cannot really use the word "exhausted" in good conscience. Last night, however, one of the girls in our youth group came over to handle the middle of the night feeding and the early morning feeding so that Jeremy and I could get some rest. We are so thankful for Courtney Cooke and her willingness to help us get some shut-eye! I still woke up with Greta and made her bottle, but Courtney handled the feeding and getting her back to sleep. It was so nice to wake up for 5 minutes versus 45 minutes! It is amazing what and extra 80 minutes of sleep can do for a person! (Plus, I had coffee this morning and will likely take some excedrin this afternoon for my hormone headaches...fun!)

I wanted to share this photo of Courtney and Greta:

Thank you, Courtney Cooke!! We appreciate you!!