Sweet freedom

Sweet little Miss V has always had her sleep issues. She wakes up too early and too often, she must nurse to sleep, she only likes sleeping on me, etc., etc. Take her to her crib at naptime and she stiffens up, screaming and throwing herself around to try to get away. I've tried many, many things/methods, read three books and many articles, without much success and have always gone back to what works so we can all just get some dang sleep.

Now that she's almost one, V seems to be maturing in her sleeping a bit. It's harder to get her to go to sleep because she's so very excited about life, but she's also likely to go back to sleep more quickly if she wakes up at night now, rather than me or Ross having to get up for an hour or two and then having to put her to sleep all over again. Of course we have a few bad nights here and there, mostly related to developmental milestones (It's so great that I can clap now, Mama! I know it's 3 a.m., but I want to clap!!) or teething or shots or whatever. But overall, there is definite improvement.

So I got the idea that, since she generally sleeps so heavily when she first goes to sleep at night, that we could put her crib mattress on the floor of this second bedroom where we have the computers and maybe I could get her to sleep there while I work and then take her to bed when I go. This is the third night I've done this and so far it is a great success. In fact, even though it took about an hour and a half, once she got good and sleepy she went to sleep without nursing tonight. This is a giant step for her.

So now I sit here typing sans baby on the lap! Sweet freedom!