At LAST!

DS just is not a happy sleeper. He hates going to sleep. I can try, but fail, to put him in his crib awake but tired and see if he goes to sleep. I keep trying it, but it never works. He may be in there 5-10 minutes or just two seconds before he cries for me to help him go to sleep.

Anyway, we have our bedtime routine of naked time, bath-time, massage him dry, into bedroom and put him in his sleeping bag and grab Herr Hare, his bedtime toy, Hungry Caterpillar, feed and prayers, then lullaby and jiggle, rock, in bed, rock bed, stop rocking, finish lullaby. He's usually asleep for 8pm now, the routine starts at 7. Once he sleeps for longer we'll put him down earlier.

He now wakes at 9 for a feed (he wears down his reserves fighting sleep so hard) and for the last week or so he's been waking at 11.30 for a play, 2am for a play, 5am for a feed and then every hour or so after that. I managed to cut out the 11.30 one by forcing him back to sleep with 15 minutes of lullaby (my poor voice!) and last night he slept 9-3! I'm so happy! (Then up at 5.30 and just gone 7, but that's fab too!)

Yes, I do know he's old and big enough that he could sleep through if he wanted, but six hours to me is fantastic. OK, I did wake before him scared that something had happened, but I'm lucky in that I have a snorer.

However, I realise that I do like the night feeds - I read in the Church newsletter about one of our Mission Partners, asking to give praise to God that their baby is now sleeping though. "Poor them," I thought, "no night-time snuggley feeds."

Even so, praise God that Liebling isn't playing at night-time now, he's back to feeding and sleeping with one long sleep. That's fantastic and just shows that the effort is paying off, I know I need encouragement some days and I hope this encourages others.

Just have to figure out how to get him to go to sleep all by himself now!