Sleep.

A friend of mine hired a sleep doula. Basically, someone to help her transition her 6 month old to sleeping through the night, and sleeping in his own crib. Three days in, she had accomplished both goals. The doula put her through a program that involved a few things such as a noise machine, a small ammount of "crying it out", and not feeding him in the night anymore, and teaching him to fall asleep without feeding as an association. While Rose's sleeps weren't horiffic, it made me think. If she woke up in the night, she definitely needed feeding to fall back to sleep. Also, she was more awake in the evenings when i was putting her to sleep, and she required a lot of rocking until I could successfully put her in her crib for the night. While I am not a fan of any cry it out methods, I decided to adopt some of these ideas into our routine. Of course, the sleep doula is a hired professional, and her methods are a lot more detailed, but I wanted to use the basic premise of her ideas.

So one night Mike was away, and it seemed like a good night to at least start something. I figured it might be easy for me to try a new program by myself. As I usually do when I am alone with the girls, I popped a show in the DVD player for Paige as I went off to put Rose to sleep. I fed her as usual, and she did not fall asleep. I tried to put her in her crib but she cried and I took her out of the crib and sat with her. Tried to put her back in again. Cried. Now if Mike was home, I would have sat with her for a long time as he would be putting Paige to bed anyway. But with him gone I couldn't just leave Paige out there forever. I decided this was the first step in the process. I put her in her crib and said good night and walked away. She cried and cried, but only for 5 minutes and then fell asleep. Then she slept all night long. The next night, I stuck to the plan and she cried when I left the room, but only for about 3 minutes. Each night I have put her in her crib fairly awake and the crying went down to 30 seconds, 5 seconds, and now none.

Another thing we have implemented is letting her cry a bit if she wakes up in the night. Sometimes she will fall asleep on her on. Other times she needs a diaper change, which is fine by me. She has also gotten 2 molars in the past 2 weeks, which have definitely impacted her wake ups. For now, if she wakes up in the night at a reasonable hour, I am still feeding her back to sleep. I figured the teething was irritating her and didn't want to take that away just yet. That'll be the next step though--dropping night feedings.

I also did buy a white noise machine. We always had a fan in her room to drown out some noise, but the sleep doula says only a whie noise machine, apparently. I'm not sure it makes much difference then the fan, but will be portable to the cottage and Edmonton as well.

So that's where we're at. She can cozy up in her crib on her own and fall asleep. She can also wake up in the night and find her soother and fall asleep on her own. Wet diapers and teething still seem to wake her up, and she still does like that feeding if she has fully woken up. But...in the past 18 days (because i have been keeping track!) she has slept through the night 9 days.
It seems like the days are in clusters...like 3 bad teething nights she woke up, and then started sleeping through for a few days, and then up for a couple of nights. But this is amazing! And the nights she's waking up it's only once. And she has stopped waking up on and off between 10 and 12.

I can't believe just letting her cry for 5 minutes one time basically solved most of our problems. I never would have let her cry for half an hour, so thank goodness this worked.

The other amazing thing is that Paige sleeps through the night every night now too, and she totally didn't before. No more peeing in the night. No more demands for water at 3:00am. She just sleeps. Ah bliss...