Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Oh what a night!

The evening started out like any other here at home. Asher started his fussing at about 6:00, and had a hard time going to sleep for the night when we tried to put him to bed shortly after 7:00. Greg and I have recently decided to put Asher to bed a bit earlier because we thought he may need that. The little guy finally dozed off around 7:45.

At 10:00 I roused him just enough to eat. It's called a "dream feed". Essentially the point is that Asher will do his longest stretch of sleep from the time I go to bed at night, not from when we put him down. We've been doing it for about a week and it seems to be working - Asher's only getting up once at around 4:00 to eat. So he ate pretty well at 10:00 and then had a big diaper explosion, so I changed him, at which point he woke up screaming. Really, I don't blame the poor guy, all snug and sleepy and full tummy. Who would like to be woken up to being stripped down and changed?!?

So I heard Asher around 4:00 in his crib. He was making some little happy noises - coos and sighs - but no crying or fussing. I decided I'd wait until he started whining before I got up to feed him. Honestly folks, I can often get another 20 minutes of sleep this way. And I mean, the boy was happy after all, so no harm, right?

Well, much to my surprise, when I finally heard Asher starting to fuss, I rolled over and saw this!


I KNOW! 6:02! The little guy FELL BACK ASLEEP! How glorious to only wake up at 6:02!

So here's a picture of Asher after sleeping through his first whole night.


And this is usually what I find every morning. Typical Asher. He's managed to wiggle his way out of the swaddle wrap, and it's always the same one leg he gets free. We think it's pretty funny :)

So this makes me wonder, all this time when I get up at 4:00 to feed Asher, he's actually never really crying, just making some little noises, awake. Maybe he hasn't really needed or wanted to eat after all. So does that mean I COULD HAVE BEEN SLEEPING ALL THIS TIME?!?!

I'm going to test-run this theory again tonight!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that it is hilarious that you sleep with your camera...right? Too funny! And, I'm glad that the night went great.

Debie

Anonymous said...

ha ha ha I was thinking the same thing Deb. I don't know if I would have thought to take a picture for blogging purposes at 6:02 am. You're too cute mandolyn :) I'm enjoying adventures in Lawson land. Thanks for making me smile with your posts! Here's to loads more sleep for you!

mel said...

HURRAH!!!

Anonymous said...

Yip, a little nervious about the whole sleeping with the camera bit too, I might be the next one to have my "just waking up" picture appearing in a blog here like poor Asher. ...I mean look at the poor guy, he was clearly not ready for his picture to be taken! :)

Mandi said...

Ok folks, a little clarification needed. Here's the sequence of events. I woke up, saw it was 6:02, went downstairs and grabbed the camera, took a picture of Asher, and then fed him. Once I was done all this it was about 6:30. I really wanted to capture the first sleep through the night though so I pushed the time on clock BACK to 6:02 and THEN took the picture. Yip, the whole time picture, totally set up! What kind of freakazoid do you think I am, sleeping with my camera! :)

Anonymous said...

And here we thought you were dedicated... :)

Any more through-the-night sleeping?

Mandi said...

Mel - out of the last 4 nights, he has slept through the night on 3 of them! I'm thinking that's a good sign!

Anonymous said...

I remember going through this exact same thing with Jacob. I got to a point where I realized that he wasn't really crying out and mad, he was just making some sounds in his bed. Dave would tell me to just relax and go back to sleep. If he needed me he would let me know with a cry. Then I would wake up and it would be after 6:00. Enjoy the extra sleep, because it could change at any moment :)