Them the rules...3 & 4!

Pea is amazing!  We are now one whole week into sleeping through!  I've chased a dream...and, quite literally, we've made it!  Bliss.  So, the last two rules that helped get us here...

Rule #3:  Make sure they always take a full feed -it helps them to not get used to falling asleep when feeding.
I can only really talk about breast feeding here...I'm not sure how different it is for bottle fed babes.  Any comments...please post them!  My babies always fell asleep, in the very early days, when they were nursing.  I've always worked REALLY hard to get them to wake up & keep feeding.  The aim being to get them into taking full meals & not snacking.  This meant that both my girls (with the exception of growth spurts) fed, at least, 3 hourly.  I would obviously feed them, if they were hungry...but I tried to get them to eat meals not snacks!

The waking Bean & Pea up, to get them to eat properly, meant that they were never used to feeding to sleep.  Which meant one less sleep prop to worry about!

Rule #4:  Before you climb into bed, wake Bub & give them milk!
It just didn't seem logical to let Pea have the long stretch of sleep (that EVERY baby has) when we were awake.  By waking her up at our bed time, it meant that she may have that long stretch whilst we were also in the land of nod!  And it seemed to work!  From about 6 weeks Pea would make it through until 5am, from the last feed.

A couple of weeks ago we tried giving Pea some formula, to top up after the last breast feed.  To see if it would help her to sleep that little bit longer. To go past 5am, until that magic 7am! We both tried...using every trick we knew.  Pea didn't mind the bottle, or the formula.  She didn't scream.  Or fuss.  She just wouldn't take more than 10mls.  So, we tried...& gave up!  But never be afraid to try something...it may just work!

I want to take the liberty of introducing one more rule...have a little patience.  More of that tomorrow!