She SLEPT!

Last night was soooooo much better. What a difference from Friday night which was such an awful night. Last night she went down at 7:30pm and woke up at 8:30, but I didn't go get her and she fell back asleep after crying about 10 minutes. Then she slept until 2:15am WOOHOO! I nursed her for 30 minutes and then she slept until 5:15am. I nursed her for 30 minutes, and then after she cried for 20 minutes I went and got her, and she nursed and then played in our bed for 40 minutes. Then I put her back down at 6:45 and she slept another hour! So she slept 10 hours altogether which used to be her norm. On a normal work day I would have considered that a "one feeding" night as I usually get up around 5:45am anyhow.

To respond to the comments, I do keep the lights off in her room when I nurse her during the night. The first couple of months I did change her diaper a lot at night, but she pooped all the time back then. The last couple of months I either don't change it at all during the night, or I change it only once. I don't give her any eye contact either. I try to just nurse her and get her back to sleep within 30 minutes. Only on rare occasions the last month or so have I allowed her to nurse more than 30 minutes (about 40 minutes max). Sometimes she only needs 20 minutes. I usually put her down after 30 minutes ; most of the time she goes down without crying, but sometimes this means she cries for 3-5 minutes before she goes back to sleep. Usually I have been letting her cry if she wakes up less than 2 hours later, but Friday night I didn't go by that "rule" which was my mistake as it led to very, very little sleep for me that night. I need to stick with the plan of not nursing her so many times in a night, and hopefully in time she won't wake up so many times. What a difference a good night of sleep makes! I felt so "on the edge" emotionally yesterday.

Today she's wearing a new dress. Before I knew Grandma was buying her some new clothes, I had started bidding on some dresses on eBay as she only had one dress size 3-6 months. Her 3 new dresses arrived in the mail last week - two size 3-6 months and one size 6-9 months. The dress she's wearing today is the 6-9 month sized one. It fits! My little girl is growing up TOO fast!! Four months ago she was wearing preemie size and even newborn size was too big!!! Now 3-6 month pants are still too big, but 3-6 month dresses and sleepers are getting snug already. So she's wearing some 0-3, some 3-6 and some 6-9 month clothing. She won't be wearing 0-3 month pants for long though as they are getting rather tight around her waist. The one thing that never fits her in any size are the sleeves. She has short arms! I thought she looked SO cute this morning. It was her first time wearing shoes, and they were oh so very cute black patent shoes. They made her look so grown up though which I wasn't sure I liked! I love dressing up my doll baby! ;-)