the Holy Grail of sleep

Last night we acheived as close to the holy grail of sleeping through as can be expected with a 4 month old but its not her thats the problem.

Sophie 3 1/2 slept through untill 614am and then as her gro-clock showed the stars still she stayed put untill 7am when she came to me so excited she has waited for the right amount of time and slept all night. 


Molly also went to bed at 6.30pm woke up at 1.30am and 430am sleeping untill 7am when her sister woke her up otherwise she would have slept longer no doubt.


Blissful nights sleep and much needed after a rough few nights plauged with ill girlies.

This is good because we have always struggled with sleep for Sophie, I assumed when pregnant with her she would sleep through by the time I returned to work at 6 months that all would be well, it was going to be easy right?? Wrong

We never allowed sophie to fall asleep by herself and resorted to rocking, walking, singing, even rocking on the office chair while listening to Phil Collins to get her to sleep. Then when she was asleep she would sleep on me or as she got older I could transfer her once in a deep sleep to the sofa.  It ruled my life naps and sleep, I was walking around in a sleep deprived haze, it was such a shock no sleep and even though I did night shifts at work and could stay awake all night I was used to sleeping afterwards instead of day after day of no sleep. I looked at different methods of getting her to sleep but never really wanted to put the effort in I wanted the magic cure that didnt exist. Once she was about 2 years she dropped all naps and then bedtime became the issue.  We then used the super nanny technique of leaving the room and returning her to bed and got bedtime sorted out, but it still didnt solve the issue we had created early on of her coming into our bed.  She slept as soon as she was in our bed but as she became bigger she would take up more and more space and we began to be covered in bruises from the regular kicks we got from her in her sleep, but it was sleep and we were getting used to it so put up with it.

As soon as I found out I was pregnant with Molly we knew we had to tackle the problem and we had to robustly deal with her sleep and soon found she went to bed well, stayed out of our bed but would still be getting up in the night for cuddles and at its worst she would be up 20 plus times a night.  We were so tired we would get into her bed and she got attention at night and had no reason to sleep through she got lovely cuddles from mummy and daddy and no amount of stickers or rewards enticed her to be consistant with sleeping through and when she went to stay at my mums or sisters she would resort to type and go into their beds for the night.

So with molly we were detirmined to do this differently and after reading all these books i knew we had to let her fall asleep without our intervention to create from the start good sleep habits. So at the first yawn Molly is put down for a nap with a dummy and not on us shes in her cot or bouncer or pram. We dont have half the issues with Molly we had with Sophie at this age except at her worst with this virus she has and thats not even that bad! Sophies at school in the afternoons now and this is physically tiring her out and aided her sleep big time shes shattered come 7pm and straight to sleep.

So now when I get the question is she sleeping though yet I can say Sophie yes shes nearly there ....oh you mean the baby.............well