one of the hardest things i've ever done

So Lil Miss is in a habit of waking up a couple of times a night and then waking up for good between 4:30 and 5 in the morning. She does not sleep particularly well. This means that Mommy does not get good sleep and is pretty much always tired.

So today, as Stephanie and I were about to leave the office to take our lunches, her aunt Connie, who works nearby, called to ask if Steph wanted to go to lunch and they, in turn, asked if I wanted to go too. So we went to lunch and somehow we got to talking about the baby sleeping and me being tired.

And Connie told me how she had all three of her children sleeping through the night by two weeks of age. So we talked about it and I decided to try and see if I could maybe get Abby on a schedule and teach her to sleep through the night.

She said the biggest thing is for the baby to learn that, when they wake up in the dark, the best thing to do is go back to sleep. So this means that when they wake up in the middle of the night fussy, you let them be. She said sing to her, talk to her, rub her tummy, but do not pick her up, feed her or change her.

So I fed her dinner about 7:30 (another good suggestion I hadn't thought of -- I added a little rice cereal to her veggies and she LOVED it! She ate about two ounces of squash, two of green beans and four of formula) and then bathed her, changed her and put her to bed about 9:15. She slept pretty well and then woke up about 12:20.

Then I spent half an hour with her, rubbing her tummy and listening to her cry and singing to her and, most importantly, not picking her up. Just like Connie said she would, she cried for awhile and then fell back asleep without me ever picking her up. Right now I'm just waiting for a bit to make sure she's actually asleep and I don't need to go rub her tummy a little more.

I think that was one of the hardest things I've done in awhile. It's hard not to pick her up when she's fussy or crying but I can understand the concept and why I shouldn't, so I'm trying to stick with this. It's just a little hard.

I'm learning that being a Mommy is hard work. Much harder than people give us credit for.