How it went :)

After my post last week about a little goal I set for myself (read it here), I started writing a diary of how it was going with the intention of updating it each day, so that I wouldn't forget anything....  it started off well, but then it started getting long and boring (I say that like it's not already... LOL!) and things started falling into place and I didn't want to jinx it!!!

Night/Day 1 (Monday night & Tuesday)
Well, we sure started with a bang!  My plan was to, no matter what time she had her early morning feed, we were going to be up to start our day with Todd at 6am.......  Piper had other ideas.  She woke up at about 3:30am for her feed (about 4hrs since last one) and I got up and feed her, but afterwards, rather than being asleep as she normally is, she was WIDE AWAKE!!  I put her into bed anyway in the hope that she'd drop off to sleep, but she grizzled in bed for 5 minutes before I decided that she'd already woken my husband up and she must be windy.  After trying to keep the grizzling to a minimum (our house echos in the eerie quiet of 4am), did what I could to help get the wind out and gave her another drink, she finally did a big fart and fell asleep in her swing at about 5am.  I moved her back into her bed (where she dropped back off to sleep straight away) and got back in myself, knowing I'd be awake again in an hour when Todd got up quite upset that the first day of my new 'routine' was already busted.  He got up and I kind of kept dosing (not sure if Piper was awake in her bassinet or not) and by the time he left at 7am, she was wide awake again.  I got her up, feed her and laid her in bed with me watching TV while I kept dosing until Mackenna got up just after 8am.  We had a home day Tuesday where I feed her and let her sleep as much as she wanted in the hope that Tuesday night was going to be better!

Night/Day 2
Well, last night wasn't so bad.....  before bed she had 10 minutes in the Jolly Jumper, a bath, a feed and 20 mins or so of playtime (Todd was a bit late home from work, so I had to keep her up so she could say hello to him and have a cuddle.)  She went straight off to sleep, but woke up again at about 10:30pm hungry.  I was hoping to get a little bit longer out of her to make sure the next stretch would be longer, but she wasn't going back to sleep!  I gave her a 140ml bottle, but I made the mistake of putting a fast teat on it and she was wide awake by the time it was warm, so she guzzled it really quickly and was still awake and a little bit windy by the end of it.  She was asleep in about 10mins though and I sat down to express.......  half an hour of pumping and no let down :( so I got what I could and went off to bed upset that I'd have to give her a formula feed tomorrow to make sure I could express a feed for her tonight during today (does that make sense!)  Anyway....  she slept until about 2:30, got up for a feed and straight back to sleep and then up at 6am with Todd and I.  So let's say at 8:45am on Day 2, it is going ok so far!

(Few hours later...) Rest of the day pretty much went to 'the plan.'  We had an outing to Playgroup this morning and a quiet afternoon for her to catch up on the sleep she lost this morning, so lets see how that affects her sleeping tonight!!

[.........and skip forward a few days....]

.....  so it's Sunday night and as I mentioned before, I stopped writing my little diary because everything started falling into place and I didn't want to jinx it by putting it out there!!  I always find that once I voice my thoughts, they either happen when I don't want them too or they go really, really pearshaped, so sometimes it's best not to voice them until I know for sure it's a goer :)

Since I started giving Piper a big feed at lunchtime (whether it be expressed breast milk or formula) she has been sleeping from about 7 - 7:30pm until 3 - 3:30am fairly consistently and she is waking up every day between 6 - 7am to start her day.  It has been great and I've finally been able to put some predictably back into our lives!! :)  Now that I know she can go that long without a feed, I'm going to start next week getting her up before I go to bed and 'dream feed' her to see if we can get her sleeping from about 11pm - 6am instead.  If it doesn't agree with her and she doesn't sleep through for that stretch, I'll go back to what we have now and I'm sure that as she gets bigger still and starts on solids, the time she sleeps will get longer and she'll sleep through.   

I'm really glad to have done this and thanks again to Karlee for the motivation to actually do it!!  I've been 'thinking' about setting a plan for Piper's eating and sleeping and not doing anything about it since Todd went back to work almost a month ago, but I found once I put it out there, I was really keen to get stuck into it and make it work.  It's funny how, even though you know people aren't going to judge you if you 'fail' or don't do as well as you'd hoped, but you really want to be able to report back with good news and it makes you put that extra little bit of effort in. 

I hope everyone else has good news to share too.  xx