Mornings with Mari

As expected, mornings have drastically changed since Mari came into our lives. Mari began sleeping through the night when she was 7 weeks old, but when she turned 6 months old, something snapped, and she began waking up in the middle of the night. Once she turned 6 months, she could crawl and pull herself to standing, so when she woke up in the night, she wasn't able to put herself back to sleep like before. She goes through different stages of sleeping patterns, and the one for the past 2 months has been waking in the middle of the night and getting in to bed with Mommy and Daddy.

When we were living with my grandparents, we had to let her sleep with us because we didn't want to impose on our sleeping landlords. So, when we moved into our new apartment, it became habit to get Mari up when she woke up in the middle of the night. Luckily for me, Aaron has been taking the night duty ever since she stopped nursing in the middle of the night. He never complains about it. Having nights to myself have made the biggest difference in keeping my sanity during the day. Isn't Aaron a wonderful husband?! Mari is a good baby, but even good babies are tough. When she wakes up, Aaron takes her in the living room and sleeps with her on the couch instead of bringing her in bed with us. She's been banned from our bed ever since we moved. She tosses and turns during the night, so even though she's sleeping, we aren't. I have a strict no-nursing-before-6am rule, so even if she gets up at 5am (which she's been doing lately) I don't have to get up before 6.

Anyway, we used to just let Mari cry it out, but she would get more frantic the longer she cried, so she would go on for two hours. Just recently, she's been putting herself to sleep. She would whimper about 5 minutes after I put her down, but then go right to sleep. The first time she did that, I had to go in and check on her to make sure she was okay and didn't fall out of the crib or anything!

This morning was different. Mari she slept in this morning. I actually had to go and wake her up at 7am. I actually showered before she even woke up! This morning, I put her down for her nap, and she didn't even cry before falling asleep 10 minutes later.

Just in case you are wondering, this is the current schedule of our 10 month old:
6am - nurse
7:30 am - breakfast (oatmeal, cherrios, and yogurt)
9am - nurse & nap
10:30am - play
noon - lunch (finger foods)
2:30pm - nurse & nap
4pm - play
5:30pm - dinner (one of mom's specialty dinners)
7:30pm - bath
8:00pm - nurse & bed