Bittersweet

Last week, we dropped one of Jayla's feedings...the one she has used every single night of her life to go to sleep. I'm not sure why I decided to do it. I think it was a combination of wanting more time to myself at night (on average we started that feeding around 9:45pm...and she generally nurses about 35-40 minutes), thinking it was time for her to learn to fall asleep on her own, and adding a third feeding of solids during the day. Regardless as to what the original reason was, I think a week later, I am glad that I did it.

The first few nights were hard. I wanted to nurse her. She wanted to be nursed. And yet, my husband was forcing her to lay in the bed and cry. Now, the longest she cried all week was just 20 minutes and I ran an errand to the store during that time. That was Sunday night. And by Thursday night, we put her in the crib awake and didn't hear from her until 6:45 on Friday morning. She has started to compensate for the dropped feeding by spending more time snuggling with me during awake times, which is fine with me.

So, I'm sad that we don't have that time together. But, I am so happy to have a big chunk of my evenings back and most of all - an 8 month old that can put herself to sleep on her own!