Shooting Myself in the Foot

At least I hope I'm not. Many of you know what a difficult time Husband and I have had at getting Gumba to sleep well, both at night and during the day. When Gumba was first born he slept with Husband (I cherish my space too much). Gumba liked feeling us close, which was understandable considering he spent the first 10 days of his life in an isolete in the NICU. Getting him to sleep by himself took a lot of patience, much hair pulling, and a lot of trial and error. Gumba would only fall asleep in our arms, and then sometimes wake up when put down. I know where our mistake was, don't need to point it out. If you could only have seen how cute and precious he was, there was no way I could listen to him cry. The day finally came that we could put him down drowsy but awake, but the routine to do this was 15 min or longer. Then, we got it down to a couple of minutes. We NEVER thought this possible. Two months ago we succumbed to the CIO because I was still nursing 4-5 times a night. I was exhausted and I knew something had to be done. We really really wanted to do the attachment parenting thing, but Gumba was a baby not responding to this strategy. After a month of CIO Gumba was still waking up at least once a night and crying for 30 minutes. Gumba then had an ear infection and was back to sleeping with us getting nursed 2-3 times a night. After his ear infection cleared up the CIO was re instituted and with great effect. By night two he was sleeping from 6:30pm - 5am. After Gumba waking up at 5am and not going back to sleep for a week or so I decided to start nursing him at this early wake up. I think he was really truly hungry. Since I started nursing him at this early time he has more times than not slept until 6am. An added bonus is he's starting to get up later for this early feeding. This morning he woke up at 5:40, nursed him, and he slept until 6:30. He is taking naps at 9 and at 1. Six months ago I wouldn't have said this was possible.

I hope I didn't shot myself in the foot for telling you this. Sometimes I think Gumba knows when I being boastful about such stuff.