STTN

I think you've all seen these letters in some of Morgan's old posts. STTN is an "internet abbreviation" for "Sleep Through The Night." I see it on my Mommy message boards all the time. When someone has a new baby the countdown begins for when they will STTN. Some babies do it early (six to eight weeks), some do it late (beyond 6 months old or even a year), but every parent longs for that day. Well....I think I can say Piper did this for the first time last night. I'm sure it was a total fluke, but it was a nice one nonetheless.

She had been going to sleep between 11:00 pm and Midnight, give or take a few nights (I can count on one hand) at 10:30 or so. Then she will (fairly consistently) sleep about 5 hours until waking up to eat. Then she'll go back to sleep for another two or three hours. This worked OK, but the late bedtime is getting hard on me, so I really wanted to slowly move it up. I checked the old log I kept for Morgan and we are approaching the time that we were able to get her to go to sleep earlier. So, I decided to "experiment" last night. With parenting I find many things are experiments. You just try new things and figure out what works and what doesn't.

So, I thought it was time we tried an earlier bedtime. For the last few nights I thought she looked pretty overtired in the evenings and wondered whether she could go down for the night earlier. Last night I figured out that she would have plenty of feedings in by about 8:30-8:45, so at about 8:45 I nursed her for the last time for the night. As we are supplementing some formula at night, David gave her a bottle right after and we managed to get her asleep by 10:00 pm. Woo Hoo! Even if she woke up more in the night, this was already a victory. So, about 3 am I woke up to some "rousing noises" from Piper. I went to the bathroom and when I came out she was quiet again. I dozed on and off and she finally woke up for real at...wait for it...5:45 am!!! She slept almost 8 hours! I wish I had slept soundly all that time. If she keeps doing this I'll be in heaven!! Even if she doesn't, the earlier bedtime is a step in the right direction. I know with Morgan we had her at her usual bedtime, about 7:30-8:00 by the time she was four months old. So, at almost 8 weeks we're making some good progress.

Well, the "biscuit" is waking from her nap. Gotta go! I'll keep you updated on if the STTN continues!