night weaning

Started solids, night weaned, sleeps through the night (!!!), moved into her crib, shares a room with her brother and sister, personality is much more relaxed, smiles readily, laughs easily,

It only just occurred to me that I forgot to include her piggie in her 7-month photoshoot. Alas, I guess forgetting things is par for the course with being a mom to three.

Reese has really blossomed this month but it was a rocky start. We started off the month with a lot of stress, Reese was just getting over her second of back to back ear infections, which meant she was all around quite grumpy. At one point I was becoming increasingly worried that she may have a chronic illness (mainly, cystic fibrosis) or a mental disorder. But then seemingly overnight, the clouds parted and my little girl brightened up. She became so much more personable and social. She started laughing much more readily and smiled easily. It was like we were finally connecting. It was a HUGE weight off my shoulders, to say the least.

Reese started solids this month and let me tell you, it has been quite the struggle. She so clearly wants to take part in meals, and she loves gumming food, but she doesn’t actually want to swallow any of it. Just another way that she is markedly different from her brother and sister. Her first food was avocado and she seemed to like it but didn’t want to swallow it. In fact, it’s been near impossible to get her to swallow anything. Either, she spits it out the second it goes in or she’s so mad that it’s in her mouth that she throws it all up anyway. The. Struggle. Is. Real. We took a break from solids for a couple weeks and when we tried again, we had similar results. She wants it, but she doesn’t want it. I’m hoping we’ve finally turned a corner. This past week she actually started swallowing a little bit! I’m actually able to get some food into her! Her poop still isn’t transitioning from breastmilk poop, but it’s a start!

Mid-month, I night weaned her. I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be as simple as night weaning Asher and Bennett but I still wasn’t fully prepared for how willful she is. We moved her into the kid’s room and into her own crib. The first night, she woke up 3 times and was awake for over an hour for 2 of those times. Every night after that she would only wake up once but would stay awake for 1-2 hours screaming while I rocked and soothed her. Finally, after about 10 days on a Friday night, I asked Rafaan to get up with her (I was only half serious and was pretty sure I’d be getting up). I awoke the next morning to find Rafaan asleep in the kid’s room and I hadn’t heard Reese at all. Come to find out she did wake up, but Raf picked her up, for a minute, put her back down and then patted her butt for 2 minutes and SHE WENT BACK TO SLEEP!!! At this point, I congratulated him on his promotion to night shift. Since it was a long weekend he got up with her the next few nights all of which he was able to get her back to sleep fairly quickly, with the exception of the one time that she woke up at 5:30 a.m. and fussed until I got up and nursed her at 6:15 a.m. or so. After that, she started sleeping through the night. it’s been kind of amazing. All 3 kids share a room and that’s been going really well also. They’ve only woken her up a couple times and we’re able to get her back to sleep pretty quickly for the most part. Hallelujah!!

Both my grandmother’s are visiting this month and it’s quite special that Reese has been able to spend some time with them. She is starting to scoot and scootch along on the floor on her tummy. I think she’s still a ways off from crawling and no teeth to speak of but she’s definitely starting to widen to roaming radius. Reese is very much a Mommy’s girl, just like her sister Bennett was. She does this funny thing where she’ll be fussing with someone else and I’ll go pick her up and she immediately stops fussing but then rotates her body to look back at the person that was just holding them with this almost smug look on her face. It cracks me up. She’s also taken to holding her arms out and waving her hands about in elegant little circles, almost like she trying to practice a Persian dance. She really is such a delight and I just can’t get enough of her sweet snuggles!

It’s happened. It has finally happened. I night weaned Asher and he now sleeps through the night (for the most part).

I was waiting until Asher turned six months old and started solid foods to see if he would sleep through the night on his own, and well, that kind of happened but he still needed a bit of a nudge. At his 6 month check up, his pediatrician reiterated what I already knew and told me that he didn’t need to eat during the night. However right around this time we had a lot going on, with a bunch of house guests, a wedding, a massive growth spurt and general chaos, so I decided to wait until all the craziness died down to night wean, which was really good, because the aforementioned growth spurt hit which had him waking up every 2 hours during the night demanding to be fed. right. NOW.

So on Monday, June 24th, I told Raf that tonight was the night. I was going cold turkey. I wasn’t going to nurse Asher and he was probably going to be quite upset about it so we should brace ourselves for the sleep loss ahead.

We went about his bedtime routine as normal: bath, bottle, prayers, stories, song and bed by 7pm, but this time I told him that I wasn’t going to nurse him during the night and that it was ‘sleep sleep’ time and that he could nurse again in the morning. He didn’t wake up (well, he did, but it wasn’t a real wake up and he put himself back to sleep before I had even fully awoken). The next morning I was amazed when he woke up at 7am, but I told Raf that this was probably just a fluke and that it was likely just the tale end of his growth spurt so we shouldn’t get too comfortable because surely tonight we would witness his dissatisfaction. Well, Tuesday night the same thing happened. He slept through the night, with only the briefest of wake ups. 12 hours. I couldn’t believe it and was now cautiously optimistic. Maybe, just maybe, he had figured this whole thing out. My little boy, so easy, so happy, so agreeable. Of course he would sleep through the night with little else from me than just explaining to him how things would go down. My sweet angel.

Wednesday night he SCREAMED for over an hour between 3am and 5am. He wasn’t crying, he was screaming. He was MAD. I went in when he first woke up and patted him and told him it was ‘sleep sleep’ time and that I loved him and that everything was okay, then I left. I went back in every 20 minutes after that until he fell asleep. I think it was 3 more times. I felt terrible. It was awful to listen to him screaming like that and thrashing his tiny body about in his crib, but the previous 2 nights had proven to me that he in fact did not need to nurse. So I kept my head down and pushed on through. The next morning he awoke at around 7am and was all smiles and babbles, which definitely helped eased the heart ache I was feeling.

Thursday night I was prepared for a repeat of the night before but instead he legitimately slept through the night without even a peep.

Friday night he woke up screaming around 2am. So I went in and did the whole thing: pat, kiss, sooth but as soon as I left he stuck his thumb in his mouth, rolled over and went to sleep.

And that was that. He now sleeps through the night. Of course, in the past week he has been trying really hard to learn to crawl so there have been several nights when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning to the sounds of him cooing and grunting in his crib as he attempts forward motion. I just go in, put him on his back and tell him it’s time to sleep and he goes right back to sleep. It is amazing.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the night weaning, or because he’s started solids, or simply because of the summer heat, but he seems to want to nurse 1 or 2 more times during the day. I’m not complaining, I get to gaze down into these hazel gray eyes. There isn’t a sweeter view in the whole world.

If you’re interested in reading about how we trained Asher to fall asleep on his own, check out: Sleep Training // Part 1.

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series // 7

Sleep Training // Part 2