Crying it out

So about the middle of May my perfect baby who had been sleeping through the night (STTN) or nursing no more than once in 12 hours overnight decided that she was going to start nursing ALL NIGHT LONG. Not sure what happened but I'm guessing that since this coincided with our visit to the pediatrician that we must have brought home the wrong baby, right? Ha! Ok, maybe not but something's definitely going on, maybe teething? To top it off, my husband goes out of town for a bowling/golf tournament and she decides that during this time she won't sleep at all at night. I even tried putting her in bed with me and that went alright the first night. I mean I figured that if I was going to nurse her all night long I might as well be able to sleep through it right? We won't even talk about the second night..... It was a LONG weekend and I decided that I had to do something to get some sleep. So I called my sister-in-law (my baby encyclopedia) for advice and she tells me that she thinks we should go ahead and try to let her cry it out (CIO). Basically we let her cry so that she can learn to soothe herself and fall asleep on her own. We go in every 10-15 minutes and soothe her but don't pick her up or nurse her (we rubbed her back and gave her a pacifier). Here's how it went:

Night 1: She goes down with our normal sleep routine (diaper, jammies, nursing, rocking, bed) and I lay her on her back at 7:oo, no problem. By 10:00, when we go upstairs to go to bed, she wakes up and is screaming to be nursed and has flipped over onto her tummy. I flip her back over and put her pacifier in and walk out. She cries for 10 minutes and I go back in again, same deal and after 10 more minutes she falls asleep. I'm thinking there is NO way we could be this lucky? Our kids is a genius!

Night 2: She wakes up at 3am and cries for almost 2 hours. Not so much fun as last night but not surprising. I mean was I really thinking she'd just get it after 20 minutes last night? We were tired after going in and flipping her back onto her back every 15 minutes but she ended up falling back asleep for the rest of the night and we can't just stop now right?

Night 3: We've given up on flipping her back over onto her back....she just keeps rolling onto her tummy and she must be happy there because she slept through the night!!! Woohoo!! 

Night 4: Woke up again at 3am, cried for about 20 minutes and back to sleep. Not so bad....

Night 5: STTN!

Night 6: Woke up at 3am, cried for about 10 minutes and back to sleep. She's getting the hang of this.....

Night 7 & since: STTN!!! 

I can't believe how much easier this was than I thought it would be. I was so worried to do this and I really shouldn't have been. It was rough the first night and I felt so guilty because I knew all she wanted was me. She sounded so pitiful but we had to keep strong and stay with it or this was not going to work. We stuck with it and it's made a HUGE difference. I haven't nursed her at night in over a week now! The thing that surprised me the most was that we went from having a baby who couldn't stand her tummy time to one that prefers to sleep on her stomach. Every time we would go in her room to soothe her she would be flipped over on her tummy and we finally just gave in and let her sleep there and she's been sleeping soundly that way ever since. There's really nothing I can do at this point anyways, she's capable of rolling over (both ways) and even if I put her on her back she just rolls over to her tummy to sleep. Now if we could just get down to 2 solid naps a day......

Maddie is 4 months, 28 days old