Knock on Wood

For almost eleven months now, I've been asked the question "Is she a good baby?" Which, by the way, seems like a very strange question to me. I mean, really. What could she do to be classified as a "bad" baby? Burn the house down? Cuss? I don't think I would want to have a baby who was completely uninterested in exploring the world around her. But that's just me.

I usually respond to the question by saying, yeah, she's a wonderful baby, she's a pretty happy baby, she eats well and is so funny. She's not good at sleeping more than three hours a stretch, but that doesn't seem to bother her a bit. We're exhausted wrecks, but she's happy.

The mildly superstitious side of me is concerned that announcing this week's turn of events will jinx her progress.

But, screw it. The fog is starting to clear, and I want to shout from the rooftop. Vi has slept until 4:00 am five nights this week! She's doing it! Finally! FINALLY!!!

Things we tried:
A crib in her room
White noise
Night light
Repetitive lullabies
Sleeping in her room, for quick, comforting shushing and bottom-taps
Co-sleeper (which, duh, isn't for the already-crawling baby)
Bed-sharing (which isn't for the hates-to-be-kicked parent. Fine and wonderful for the newborn and for parts of the night, but not for all-night with a 10-month old)
Waiting two minutes, then three minutes, then four minutes before going to comfort her (which totally did not work for any of us. When I got to thinking about it, what exactly is the lesson a baby is learning from that exercise? Our doctor recommended this method, but he's all about Ferber. Sleep issues is one issue on which he and I don't see eye to eye. I'm not interested in forcing her to learn to sleep on her own just so I can get some rest and feel less insane. She'll learn on her own time and with gentle, loving care that makes her feel safe enough to progress.)
Feeding more food during the day, eliminating feedings one by one overnight.
Nighttime routine - bath, massage, bed. This didn't work for us. We changed it to bath, family-time/book-time/snuggle-time, bed. We climb into bed with a pile of books, read, point, ooh and ahh, and then she climbs around, flops around, rolls around until she's asleep. With very little help from us.
A pack-n-play in our room

Things we didn't try:
Letting her cry it out.
Letting her cry herself to sleep.
Leaving her alone to cry until she fell asleep exhausted.
The Ferber method.
The Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby method.
The Baby Whisperer method.
Any method that involved her crying herself to sleep.
Pattern? Yup. I was told that 1) I had to be tough and let her cry herself to sleep or she'd NEVER learn and 2) I'll let my second baby cry his/herself to sleep (which, I really hope I don't).

The final winner is a combination of the things we tried. Night time routine of bath and family time. One theory I had was that she missed Dan, because he's working long summer hours, and was waking up wanting to see him. Extra time with him before bed seemed to help. Pack-n-play in our room is great for her and us - It's easy for us to hear her if she does need us, and she can hear us, which seems to be soothing to her. Feeding more during the day and not at night. I don't believe in stuffing a baby at bed time - everything I've read says that against conventional wisdom, this isn't effective.

That's it. We'll see if she's just turned a corner, or is trying something out for this week. I'll keep you posted. For now, we're catching up on several months of sleep deprivation, and looking forward to a much less cloudy outlook on life and less anxiety at night.