The Evanina Family: We have a sleeper!!

Too much fun!

Well, I think we can officially say that we have a sleeper!! Within the past week, Mollie has slept 8 hours at a time for 6 out of the past 7 days. I feel like a new person. All this sleep makes the fussy baby during the afternoon and evening so much more bearable. I am not as tired and short tempered, and she is much less fussy than she was a couple weeks ago.

About a week ago, I went online and searched for ways to get your baby to sleep through the night. I found lots of different ideas, but decided to follow the E.A.S.Y. plan. I have had some friends use this method and swear by it, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to try (especially since she was sleeping 1-2 hours max by herself, even at night). E stands for eat, A stands for activity, S stands for sleep, and Y stands for you. Basically it is a pretty strict schedule that has the baby eat every 3 hours (something we were already doing), keeping the baby up for about an hour or so for activity (not really doing this), sleep (doing but not encouraging for the amount of time), and time for me (hard to fit in through the no sleep). The plan also consists of cluster feeding in the evening (every 2 hours for 3 feedings) to get her to sleep longer at night. She seems to be much happier now that we have started this schedule. At the same time, we started swaddling her at night, changed her formula to the sensitive type, and placed a sound machine in her bed with her. We really aren't sure which thing did the trick, but whatever it was, we aren't changing a thing!

My little burrito!

The first couple days were filled with Mollie crying it out in her crib for nap times, but now she is slowly learning the schedule. She might wake up and cry a small amount, but most of the time will put her back to sleep. If she cries for a couple minutes without putting herself back to sleep, usually I will go in and rock her back to sleep for a couple minutes. Then... she is back down.

Now... the next challenge is getting her to play on the floor or in her crib by herself. If she can't see me, she immediately starts crying. If I am sitting next to her, she is fine. I LOVE that she loves her mama, but I am trying to get her to be more independant. In 2 weeks she will be going to daycare with 5 other babies and only 1 adult in the classroom. (Yes... the ratio is 1 adult for every 6 newborns) She can't demand all the attention throughout the day... and I really don't want her to cry all day long. We will continue to work at this. Hopefully seeing some progress soon.

I will update next week with her stats. We go to the doctor for her 2 month checkup on

Tuesday. I can't believe my baby girl is already going to be 2 months old!