Working Toward One Bedroom

Harper is a couple inches away from outgrowing the bassinet. So, I have a few more weeks to work on some things before I put her in the same room with Z. I figure it's better to do some Crying It Out situations BEFORE they sleep in the same bedroom.

1. Early Wake-Up
Harper sleeps great at night but is still waking up early - around 5:30am. I give her the pacifier and she goes back to sleep and then I usually have to give it to her one more time around 6/6:15am to make it close to her 7am wake-up time. She does this whether her last feeding of the night is 9:30pm or 7:30pm, so I'm pretty confident it isn't a hunger issue but just a waking up habit. I decided I need to break the habit of pacifying her since I don't want to be going into the kids' room at that time when Z is likely to wake up and because I don't want to keep waking up that early every day.

2. Pacifier
I swore I wouldn't keep the pacifier going as long as I did with Z, but here I am close to 6 months still using it. Harper is no where as near addiction as Z was, but I still depend on it for most naps to help her settle down quickly. I definitely want to get rid of using it in the next month or so. I think it just gets harder the longer you wait.

3. Swaddle
I also want to stop using the swaddle around the 6 month mark. Harper has good control of her arms and hands and is always putting her fingers in her mouth. I think she will figure out how to suck on her fingers to calm herself.

Phase 1- Stop Early Wake-Up:
So, the plan is to work on Early Wake-Up first. I'm going to keep the swaddle at night for now, but I won't use the pacifier. I have never used the pacifier when she went down for the night because of what happened with Z. He got so used to going to sleep with the pacifier that he would partially wake up when he didn't have it. So, I just have to stop giving her the pacifier when she wakes up early. Ha. Just. This involves some Crying It Out. No Mom likes that. I started this morning. I didn't really have a plan exactly about how long I was going to let her go for or anything. I just decided to plunge into it. She cried for an hour and five minutes and then slept for another 15 and then I fed her a little early at 6:45am. It was rough. Thankfully, the men in the house, yet again, are not affected by Harper's crying and they didn't wake up. I kept my cell phone in bed to check the time, put my earplugs in and kept a pillow over my head. This helped to the extent that the cries didn't sear through my gut, however, not enough to allow me to sleep. I talked myself through it by thinking, "Well, I already went 15 minutes, I might as well go for another 15." And so on and so on. I just didn't want to lose the ground I already conquered. I'm really hoping it's better tomorrow morning, but now I can say, I did an hour one day already, I can't stop now!

Phase 2- No More Pacifier or Swaddle:
The next step will be to work on stopping the pacifier and the swaddle. I'm going to do those together since Harper will hopefully start to use her fingers when she isn't swaddled. Also, if I'm going to listen to crying, I might as well kill a couple birds with one stone. Why not kill the Early Wake-Up bird also? Three reasons. One, I think once we break the habit of that wake-up time, she'll be able to make it through regardless of no swaddling later. Two, keeping the swaddle while breaking the habit will make breaking the habit a little easier. Three, I can't handle early morning crying AND crying for most naps at the same time. I'm hoping we can tackle the early morning crying and then I'll get more sleep to better handle the crying for naps.

Here we go.