Sleep Training: One and a Half Weeks In

Well here we are, one week into the official world of Sleep Training.

Night 1
Night 2

The other nights have gone like so:
Night 3: Asleep within seconds. Fussed herself to sleep a couple times overnight. Fed only at 5:30am.
Night 4: Asleep after 4 minutes of crying. Fussed herself to sleep a couple times overnight. Fed at 1am and 5:30am.
Night 5: Asleep after 30 minutes of crying (it was awful). I have officially forgotten how many times she woke up overnight to eat. I think it was once.
Night 6: Asleep within seconds. Fussed herself to sleep a couple times I think. Fed at 12:30am and 6:15am.

The next few nights were similar - falling asleep easily and quickly with zero to minimal fuss. Last night (night 11 if you're keeping track), she was wide awake in her crib for at least 5 minutes, maybe longer, quietly looking around before falling asleep. She woke to eat around 1:30am, and then...woke up at 4am. It was too soon for her to be hungry, so we thought we'd try to do the intervals, but she just got louder and louder. Will thought something might be wrong, so we checked her physical needs -- diaper: dry, gas: not apparent; pain: possibly teething. She was pulling on her ear a lot, so we thought maybe it was teething pain. At around 4:30am, maybe 4:45, I honestly have no idea, we gave her some ibuprofen. Back to the intervals. By 5:30am, I was ready to give up. She'd been sleeping or quiet-like-sleeping for a maximum of 10 minutes, but usually only 2-3 minutes, for an hour and a half. I threw in the towel and nursed her to sleep. She slept until her usual 7:30am wakeup time. It was the first time we'd needed to do intervals in the middle-of-the-night/early-morning, and it did not go well. Oy. Hopefully that was just an April Fool's joke (she's still figuring out what a "joke" is, I suppose) and tonight will be better.

We've had slight variances to her bedtime routine over the last week or so, and are figuring out what works and what doesn't. I'm tempted to log this all in an app or a spreadsheet and really be able to analyze the data...or I could just roll with it. Which I think is the better thing for my sanity. Try to let go. Try to learn but not control the uncontrollable. I don't think I could handle more tracking anyway.

The biggest news for us is that we're doing no arms swaddled now - she's in a sleep sack, which we started with the swaddle "wings" around her chest. It was hot the other night, so we tried a sack without wings, and she's been doing fine in that. From now on, it'll just be in the zip up sleep sacks, or just pajamas if it's warm enough, I suppose. No more swaddled arms, no more hands-as-weapons.

Relatedly (I think), I'm struggling with my supply - I was always a "more than enough" person, and now I'm becoming a "just enough" person, at least where pumping is concerned. It's stressful to pump at work and not get enough for the next day. Stress decreases supply, so it's a vicious cycle. I'm trying to relax, to drink more water, eat more oatmeal...and I'm back to pumping three times a day at work (I had gone down to two and had been getting the same output). Margie seems to get plenty to eat straight from the tap, so I've thought it could be an issue with the pump, but it doesn't seem like anything is wrong with it. Might just need to re-train my body to pump.

We're trying to sleep train for naps now, which means she's somewhere between crying for half an hour before we give up the nap and sleeping for an hour in her crib (so far, just for Lorena). Usually if she nurses I can get her to nap for half an hour.

Baby sleep is vexing. I'm surrounded by people who are in the same boat, so it can sometimes feel like the only topic there is to talk about, at all. It's hard and it's exhausting walking the line between "do whatever it takes to get some sleep for everyone" and "try to make some progress to get her sleeping independently".

But that's where we are. We know she can do it. We know there will be setbacks. We know there will be more heartbreakingly painful cries. We know there will be more nights of uninterrupted sleep. But man, it's tough.