Better Bedtime

A few months ago I was gently working towards weaning Pookie from nursing to sleep. It was going well... then she got sick and we started nursing to sleep again. I thought all our "work" had gone out the window, but she started putting her head on her pillow after nursing a bit and then going to bed.

Then I started telling her to put her head on the pillow when we were done reading & nursing, and she would do it without any fuss. Then one night I had to leave the room after she put her head down. I left planning to go back but it was pretty clear she was fine. Since then I have started leaving her in the room awake. We read/ nurse, turn the lights off and I give her a kiss goodnight and leave. Most of the time she is fine and just goes to sleep.

I am SO pleased with this. It was one of my goals to have her able to fall asleep on her own before baby #2 comes into the picture. At this point that will be a year away at the very earliest, so I am very hopefully that we will reach that goal by then.

Now that said, she has been waking up again 1-1.5 hours after I put her to sleep. She had stopped but is back to doing this. Right now I think it might be partially because she is getting some new teeth. One of my other hopes is that she is mostly sleeping through the night by the time #2 comes along. I can handle one or even 2 night wakings but I would really like to be able to put her to bed and have mom/ dad time without interuptions. Who knows if it will happen? I figure it can't hurt to be optomistic, and to do everything I can to put odds in our favour of it happening.