As a first step towards weaning Dorothy, for the past couple of weeks, it's been Tom, rather than Elizabeth, that gets up with her at night. When Elizabeth gets up with her, nothing but nursing will do to go back to sleep. But when Tom gets up, rocking and singing for a few minutes is enough.
But it turns out that a beneficial side effect of this is that Dorothy has decided it's not really worth screaming for help if she wakes at night, since she's not going to get any milk anyway. So she's been sleeping through from 7:30 or 8 PM until 5 AM. She usually wakes and fusses for a while then, but goes back to sleep until 6 or 6:30. She nurses then, and then just has cow's milk until bedtime. We'll probably try to eliminate the morning nursing fairly soon, as well - the bedtime session will probably be the last to go.
In the daytime, she's settled into the daycare routine of one nap in the afternoon pretty well. At home, she sometimes takes one nap, and sometimes two, depending on when she got up and what the activities have been. She's generally getting around 2 hours (plus or minus an hour) of sleep during the day, though. It's nice to have her more predictable!
Posted by Elizabeth Nugent at March 20, 2005 06:06 PM