No more nursing to sleep & a Great Weekend

Look at my big girl!!

I've made the tough decision to stop nursing G to sleep. It's a sleep crutch that is causing some bad night time troubles. So far today, I've been nursing her, reading a story, and then putting her down awake. It's worked for both naps, with only a bit of crying. She has been able to put herself to sleep for a while now, but I hadn't done it consistently. With babies, consistency is the key, so I am vowing to keep putting her down awake each nap/bed time. We are also starting to feed her solid food two times a day, because I think part of her inability to sleep through the night is due to serious hunger. Her night time cries are not just the "I want to eat" or "I'm lonely" cries, they are the "I must eat or I will scream all night because it's that bad" cries. I have tried cried it out, and it does not work. I refuse to have a broken heart, a sleep deprived baby, AND an isolated baby. Breastfeeding is much different than formula feeding, so we have to do what works for G, judge me not. Her tummy digests breast milk much faster than a formula baby's belly digests formula...so it's physically impossible for her to sleep through without having added solid calories too.
I'll keep you updated on how all of these changes affect our nighttime.
For the record, last night, I got 1 hour of sleep, awake for 2 hours, 3 hours of sleep, awake for 45 minutes, 3 hours of sleep, awake for 1 hour, 1 hour of sleep. Those broken 8 hours are not at all comparable to 8 solid hours, things must improve, or I'll go crazy!!

Aside from G's poor sleep habits, this weekend was so wonderful that I didn't even post yesterday!! It was a great end to a miserable week (that's not worth rehashing here, just trust me).
Friday night we surprised my husband's cousin with a great party for his 30th birthday at a local brewery. My sister babysat so that we could have an evening out. It was so wonderful, I cannot explain how much it was needed! We had some adult libations, chatted with family, took a little tour, and ate delicious food.

Saturday we were lazy until the afternoon, when we had our church picnic. We went to mass, I volunteered at a game booth for 30 minutes, we ate awesome BBQ made by the Knights of Columbus, had free dessert, got G a balloon "animal?" from a clown, and my sister took the baby on her first cake walk. As the music came to a stop, I yelled over to my sister to ask what number we needed. She looked down and responded, six! The announcer pulled out her number, "six!" she said. They had won!! I was overly-excited!! :-) G didn't know what had happened, but she got excited by me laughing and clapping. The tough part was choosing the prize. My sister settled on some butter cupcakes with chocolate icing--great choice.

G and my sister won the cake walk!

Then this morning I made a scrumptious breakfast and my husband brought us all drink treats from Panera Bread. G took an amazingly long afternoon nap--so I hope she is back on track from her horrible night of sleep.