First night

Ok so I know that a lot of moms have gotten this down already. I used to have it down until the house got cold and we brought baby into our room to sleep. Now the "fight", "retraining", "willpower" must begin again.

What I am talking about is getting my baby to sleep in her own crib in her own room and hopefully through the night, or at least not having her wake up every 2 hours to nurse and having me give into it.

So tonight we did our new bedtime routine, which I have not done since she was 3 months old. (She is now 8 months). We got her into her pj's, brushed her teeth, read 3 bedtime stories, sang 4 lullabies, and I talked softly about our adventures together. And around 8:30 she went to sleep.

The norm for the past few weeks...months, has been I usually watch and see when she gets tired. Sometimes that can be as late as 11:00 at night!!! But I didn't want to have a screaming baby when I put her down, so I went by her schedule. Plus I am a night person anyways so I wasn't hurting at all. Then I would climb into MY bed and have her fall asleep next to me while I sang lullabies to her. After she fell asleep, I would then place her in the co-sleeper next to my bed. Then every 2 -4 hours she would nurse and she would usually return to her co-sleeper. Sometimes she would end up in bed with me.

Lately she has been going down for bed anywhere between 8:30 and 10:00pm. Not too bad I thought. But then she would wake up an hour into it and me being the "not so smart mommy" would pick her up and bring her out to play with me or have her watch me make Brett's lunch or whatever I happened to be doing at that time.

Long story short, I have to be tough now (Tracy and Brett are making me) and I have to leave my baby in her room at night after the initial bedtime routine. No going and getting her up, no turning on the lights, nothing but a soothing "it's nigh night time baby" give her a kiss and soothe her back to sleep. I know this is possible. The question I keep asking myself is, "do I have the strength to have my baby possibly (blood curdling) cry for me for a long period of time at night when I know that all it would take to get her to go back to sleep is to bring her into bed with me and either nurse her or just breathe in her ear holding onto her and she would go to sleep within 5 minutes"? The answer I have been told is YES.

So wish me luck. So far she has only woken up 1/2 hour into bedtime and I got her to go back to sleep with no problems. It has now been 2 hours. I think I should go to sleep myself.