Sleep has gotten better in the Foodnerd house. NOT great, by any means, but compared to the last couple of weeks, it's improved. We ended up letting her cry it out last Friday because absolutely nothing was helping. I felt horrible about it, I cried, I worried we were doing it all wrong and just making her suffer for no reason... but since then, she is capable of falling asleep in her crib, instead of only in our arms or on the boob. So, yay.

Since then, night time going to bed has been pretty good. I nurse her out in the living room, get her nice and full, then we go into her room, change, book, sleep sack, rock and sing songs, into the crib. She usually cries for 5-10 minutes and falls asleep.

However, of course, more issues have come up:

- At night, even though I feed her a full feeding about an hour and a half before bedtime, and then again right before bed, she's only having a 4-5 hour first stretch, where she used to routinely do 5-6, before our sleep hell weeks. This means she wakes up for the first time pretty much just as I've really settled to sleep, and I never get more than 2 hours in a row. Not cool. I try to feed her a lot during the day but it's been happening all week. She is usually up between midnight and 1, again around 4, and then again by 5 or 6, when I bring her into our bed and nurse laying down and we can usually both sleep past 7. I do let her fuss for several minutes before going in, in hopes of her falling back asleep on her own. She is capable of falling back asleep but around those times she always needs to eat. Any way to stretch those out- especially the first one?

-NAPS. As I've moaned about, nursing to sleep isn't really working as she wakes up at some point during the transfer about half the time. So, I've also been putting her down awake. We do the same routine- change, book, sleep sack, songs, bed. As soon as I lay her down to read the book, she starts crying and looks so scared, like she knows I'm going to abandon her. She gives me this look as she cries that absolutely breaks my heart. For naps she will fuss as long as half an hour before falling asleep for 2 hours, with some short periods (less than 5 minutes at a time) of full on crying, broken up with calm, self soothing times. But the fact that she starts crying as soon as she senses the sleep cues is really breaking my heart. When she wakes up, she is all happy and smiles, so I don't think I've totally broken her trust, but I feel awful. I admit, I've been inconsistent with how I'm getting her to sleep for naps because I don't like letting her cry it out then, since I know it's harder for babies to fall asleep for naps, but I don't know what would work best. So I keep trying different things, but not bouncing on the ball with her for an hour.

So.... I don't know. Am I just being cruel? Is it for her own good? I will say, at night, she's going down quicker and quicker. But the naps she still is having a hard time with. For her late afternoon nap yesterday, after the crying for her earlier one, I just laid in the bed in the nursery with her in my arms for an hour while she slept, very peacefully. Yet she woke up screaming.

And this is all before the awesomeness that is the 4 month sleep regression...