Sleep - Doing it our way...

Okay, even though I'm sick of it, I'm still going to talk about sleep. As you know if you've been reading this lately, we've had some issues with the various methods and opinions about sleep teaching. I am painfully unfond of the 'cry it out method' and I really think that our little experiment in that served only to create mistrust in our baby - she has never slept worse that she did when we tried that. We went from a baby who had no nap issues, slept like a dream and only woke once per night - to having a baby who wouldn't go down ever, who woke four times a night - it was insane, and I felt that in listening to her, she was saying 'uh, this isn't working for me...'. So we've backtracked and are helping her to sleep at night and thus she only needs to go down once - no more waking up every fifteen minutes, back to one night feeding and later morning sleeping. I have let her go a bit in her cosleeper at night and have discovered that now that she knows how to get her thumb in her mouth and isn't fraught with displeasure - she can soothe herself back to sleep. Okay, not every time, but often, and to me, that's much better progress. I have a much happier baby and she has a happier mommy, and I don't feel like I've betrayed the trust and closeness I've built up by cosleeping and babywearing and generally loving her to death since her birth. This gentler method works much better for us, because it is working better with her, listening to her and her needs and not simply forcing the issue for my own convenience. Right now she has just woken up and is happily lying in bed, sucking her thumb and occasionally cooing to let me know she's awake. I feel like I have my old baby back - and I'm really happy with that.