For the Record

So Jack is 8 months old, and actually rather close to 9. He has been waking at short and regular intervals at night since about 5 1/2 months. In the last month or two, he's settled into a pattern: nurse to sleep at 8pm, wake up between 9-10pm, again when I head to bed (around 11), again when Jonner heads to bed (around 12), and then nurses on and off continually through the night, and ramping up around 5:30 when he seems to be unable to sleep if his mouth is not stuck on my nipple until about 7:30. It. is. exhausting.

So 5 days ago, we've started the sleep experiment. The tricky thing about sleep experiments is that not only is it not guaranteed to work, 1) it will mostly likely cause even more extreme lack of sleep, 2) it will most likely make for a lot more work and frustration in the short term, 3) the above two reasons makes it extremely difficult to stick with it for more than one bad night.

The reason I'm determined is that I think that Jack is old enough that he can really truly make it until midnight without nursing (therefore the goal is humane and not "sleep training" per se), I am starting to be so tired that I'm not being a particularly great mom during the day, and I have a partner that supports me.

Hence, I start Jack off in the crib, go to sleep on the couch downstairs, and Jonner sleeps in the basement. Before midnight, all wakings are handled by dad. Afterwards, I'm back on duty. If I can stay awake long enough, I come back down to the couch after he falls asleep.

So last night was the first breakthrough. He woke up at 10:30 as usual, but then went to sleep by himself after crying lightly only about 3 minutes. He was up again at 1:30, and again at 2:30, but then slept till 5:30 and nursed in bed till about 7:30. Still, it's progress.

I don't know if I'll really update this thread, but I just needed proof for later in case I ever forget how hard it was.