Alex and Sleeping

So after two months of feeding Alex at midnight, Aaron (understandably) was a little sick of it and wanted to wean Alex from his nightly feedings. I was basically waiting for Aaron to say he didn't want to do it anymore before we tried because how can you tell when a baby is ready to make it through the night without a feeding? We tried at the beginning of September and he wailed at 2 a.m. for hours because he was so hungry. I didn't want that to happen, so I waited as long as Aaron was fine with it. I don't blame him for wanting to wean him, though, and he said that Alex was getting more restless during the feeds (maybe like he wasn't too happy and being woken). As we started, I prayed that it would work and Alex would be fine without eating. I'd been keeping track of how much he ate at night hoping he would start to taper off naturally and basically wean himself, but that didn't happen.

So we started the process of weaning. I wanted to go slow, so we planned to reduce the amount he ate by .5 oz each night, but the first two nights, Alex didn't even finish the amount in there, so I lowered it even more. Once we got to 2 oz, I went right to 1 oz and then nothing (seemed stupid to wake Alex up for a half an ounce). The night we gave him 1 oz, I was crossing my fingers. I figured if he could make it with just 1 oz, he could make it with nothing. That night he slept fine and I woke up in the morning and realized that he had gotten through the night without crying.

This gave me confidence that he would make it through the next night without anything just fine as well, but I was still a little worried. Well, that night, not only did Alex make it through the night fine, but he slept till 7 a.m.! Then this morning he slept till 6:50 a.m. I guess waking him up during the night to eat disturbed his sleep, or something. If this becomes a habit, I may just change my alarm clock to 6:30 a.m., rather than 6 a.m. I'm not getting up if he's not. So that was pretty exciting.

In addition to weaning Alex from the nightly feeds, Alex has been indicating that he no longer needs his late afternoon nap, which was only 15-30 minutes anyway. So for the last couple of days, I've been keeping him up a little more between waking up and his nap and between each nap so the naps are later. He's still adjusting, but seems to be doing fine. This is great because it gives me time in the late afternoon to go out with Alex and do stuff, where before he was only ever up for about 2.5 hours at a time, and once you feed him and change his diaper and such, that doesn't leave much time to go out.

So overall, it's pretty exciting. I'm glad my boy is such a good sleeper. That Sleepeasy Solution really worked for us. I'm glad I found that book.