Sleeping through the night

Hah! While other babies in my antenatal group seem to be nightly overcome with such drowsiness that they succumb to dreamland at 7pm and don't surface again until dawn's pearly light, ours has a regrettably active social life with Mum and Dad at regular intervals through the hours of darkness. Sometimes hungry, sometimes inexplicably sad, sometimes cheerily ready to play, sometimes she chirps or chokes (alarming, but perhaps just a self-burp?) loudly enough to wake us, and perhaps herself, but then sinks swiftly back into sleep.

It has only been recently (the last three weeks or so, at around eight months) that we started to think of 'sleep training' as a way to get our Hungry Mouth to breastfeed less at night and thus hopefully eat more solid food in the day. (See gloomy weaning posts.) At a healthy weight of 8.5 kilograms she certainly can get through the night without more feeding after 11pm (and some would say she doesn't even need this late feed), so we thought we'd try just cuddling her instead of feeding her whenever she awakes.

Well, some nights are fine - she wakes once or twice, doesn't protest about not being offered milk, and drifts off again with the help of our seashore-sounds baby CD or a cuddle or both. A few nights, she has slept through until 6-30am from 11pm, which is really fine by us. But some nights contain a ghastly two- or three-hour stretch of wide-awake baby: repeated comforting, interspersed with yowls, keeps both parents alert, whether lying tensely in bed or freezing by her side.

And after months of feeding on demand several times a night (not as bad as it sounds, as she usually immediately dropped off after a quick drink), I am attuned to even baby rustles and subject to a variety of anxiety dreams...so I tend to wake up a few times anyway. And being gripped by a panic-stricken wife hissing 'where is she?' tends to wake up my hubby...

So the title of this post is (deliberately) misleading. Nobody's sleeping through the night chez nous.