Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

I believe we are superstitious people.

In the past, we would write in our weekly family post about any hopeful change Paela would have in her sleep patterns, only to have her change them within a few days. We began to joke with one another that her sleeping habits were contingent on us talking about them. Thus, we stopped mentioning her sleep habits in any post.

Granted, I don't really believe this is what happened. We only wised up to how inconsistent our daughter is and felt our reports were cheapened by mentioning something that would change with the wind. However, in time I have realized we haven't kept a record of what it is she does, even if it changes from time to time. So I am writing this brief entry as a document of the past month so we know what happened.

During Paela's six month checkup, our pediatrician commented on how, instead of feeding Paela in the night, we could try giving her water and putting her back to sleep without even picking her up. So we took up the pediatrician on this (mostly because it was written in the infamous sleep book Rebecca swears by). Starting at six months, whenever she would wake up, I would take her a sippy cup, giver her a few sucks of water, put her pacifier back in and then leave. Early on, Rebecca couldn't do this and have Paela go back to sleep: she would continue to cry. However, I had some luck on some nights when she would go right back to sleep and others weren't so great; sometimes she would cry/talk for a half hour. Generally, her pattern consisted of three awake periods: one at around 10-11pm, one around 1-2am and one around 4am. Sometimes there were fewer, sometimes there were many more. At six AM, she was up promptly, ready for a feeding and to start the day.

This is the norm. The past four nights she has slept through the night, whether we heard her or not -- but this is not her consistent behavior.