Superstitions

Laurel's been sleeping well for a week now. She seems to stay asleep between 3 and 6 hour stretches from 8pm to 8am. I've been bringing her into my bed early in the morning, but for the most part, she sleeps in her crib.

Now the thing about baby sleep is that people get very superstitious about it. When your kid starts sleeping after a particularly rough patch of not sleeping, you begin to over analyze every little thing you might have done differently to evoke this magical new trance that has fallen over your little one. I did a bunch of things on purpose, like cut back on dairy and work really hard on getting her to take long, daytime naps. I started a bedtime routine where we just hang out in dim lights for about an hour before I want her to fall asleep. I still play with her, but do everything quietly. We read books and nurse and listen to quiet music, and I make sure that she's really warm. Mark still swears by the swaddle, but she likes to suck on her fingers now, so I tried putting her in her sleep sack. We also introduced a "lovey" which is basically a little stuffed animal that is supposed to comfort your child in your absence. We use this little stuffed mushroom that Matt and Loren gave Laurel, basically because it's small and has no buttons or anything that could smother or choke her. I hold the mushroom when I feed her and tuck it in my shirt so it smells like me. When I checked on her last night, she was holding onto the mushroom with one hand and sucking on her other hand.

But who knows what triggered Laurel's sudden change in attitude about sleep, it could be any one of those things, or it could be all of them.

Or it could be none of them, and this is just a new developmental stage. Who knows? But the superstitions come into play and I'm afraid to stop doing any of the above things!