waking up

I realize that an alarming number of my recent posts have been about or mention my extreme lack of sleep. I apologize for the monotony of it, but that's my life right now - endlessly tired and somewhat bored with my responsibilities as a homemaker.

Now that Pancake is six months old and doesn't NEED to eat in the middle of the night -- or several times a night -- Mr. D and I are pulling the old bait and switch on her. Last night when she woke up at 11:00 (after having gone to sleep at 8:00) Mr. D went downstairs and rocked her back to sleep, which didn't take long. When she woke up again at 1:30 I went down and nursed her. Mr. D went down at 5:15 a.m. and rocked her back to sleep AGAIN. She woke up at 5:30 and Mr. D brought her back to our room. I nursed her and got her back to sleep again in our bed. She woke up at 6:30 for the day.

Before last night I would feed her for all of those wake ups. Now I'm cutting it down to once per night (I'm not counting the 5:30 feeding). We'll try this for a week and hope that she stops waking up so often. If it continues then next week Mr. D isn't going to take her out of her crib. He'll rub her back and put her pacifier back in her mouth. Eventually, I'll cut out the one feeding and Mr. D will have to go down for every wake up.

I really hope she gets the hint and realizes that she's not going to get milk so she might as well stay asleep. It worked with Doodle, but then again they're different kids.

Here's hoping!