That sound you heard at 5:45am Eastern Time? Yeah, that was a heavenly chorus. Well, it might also have been Rebecca, but mostly it was the heavenly chorus.

WAHOO! Both of my kids slept until 5:45am!! I did set my little timer for the 12-minute interval, and Rebecca actually quieted down. But she had woken Daniel up, who wasn’t super-upset, but definitely awake. When the timer went off at a few minutes before 6, I decided it was close enough (as my children are brilliant, but cannot yet tell time) and we started our day. Daniel was fussy, but Rebecca was calm and all smiles. We came downstairs, they polished off their bottles, and they are now playing happily on the mat.

One of these nights, maybe even I will sleep straight through! Daniel becoming a tummy sleeper has made me a little nervous, but he thankfully seems to have figured out how to turn his head to the side. He was in that position from when I checked on him around 9pm until I got him up this morning. I did wake up around 3am and had a bit of a hard time going back to sleep, I think because I was bracing for another 2-hour fuss fest from Daniel. But it never came! And all of this was just in time, since M sadly has to go back to work today after a long weekend. So no more handing them off to him after the morning nap while I crash.

I’ll be damned, this crazy Ferber thing seems to have worked. Everyone said, “3-4 nights and you’ll be all set.” Last night, I admit I wondered if maybe it wouldn’t work for Daniel. But there you go, Rebecca slept through on night 3, and Daniel on night 4. Let’s just hope they can repeat it and it isn’t just a fluke.

And maybe, just maybe, I can start posting about something other than sleep. Wouldn’t that be something?

Initial bedtime: Bath started closer to 6:30-6:45 tonight. Neither baby had napped particularly well (though better than I expected, actually), so bedtime was a touch earlier. As M was leaving the nursery after finishing Rebecca’s story, Daniel had again rolled onto his belly. He seemed OK with it, so M just left it as it was. Daniel cried a few minutes later and I checked on him, he had his face smooshed flat into the mattress. I turned him over, and he went to sleep within a couple of minutes.

Evening: Rebecca, in particular, seemed a bit unsettled and would sort of give a whine every now and then, but it didn’t seem to last more than a minute. Once or twice she even started to really cry, and we thought “oh boy, here we go.” We’d start the timer for the first interval (five minutes tonight, instead of three), and she’d be done before it went off.

Wee hours: M came to bed around 2. Checked on the kids, both seemed fine. At 4, I heard Daniel start to fuss. It wasn’t much, but I could tell from the sounds that he was stuck on his belly, so I took the calculated risk and went in and quickly flipped him over. He hardly made a peep. But he was awake, and 15 minutes later started crying. Sometimes hard, then he’d stop for a minute, then start up again. I could hear in the tone of the cry that he was obviously sleepy. Poor kiddo, just go back to sleep! I was also torn about going in when my timer went off… hard to tell if my check-in actually just made him cry harder! It certainly didn’t seem to quiet him. I wanted him to know I was still around and responding to him, but it sometimes felt counter-productive to the goal of getting back to sleep. So I tried to wait until he was really crying, instead of just going in by the clock. Alas, he cried from 4:15 until my pre-set “morning” time of 6am, so by then we just got up. Still, it was less than last night, so for that I’ll be grateful.
Rebecca, on the other hand, seems to be getting the hang of this. Despite her brother’s not-so-quiet crying, it took a full hour for her to wake up, too. And even then, she wasn’t crying hard. When I went in to check on Daniel, I gave her a pacifier and she slept until a little after six, when I got them both up. Yay!

I’m finding their newfound independence (finally unswaddled) is making me more paranoid than I had been in a while. You know when you bring that newborn home and you check like every 2 minutes to make sure they’re still breathing? I’ve been brought back to that. For as lovely as all of the non-crying was tonight, M and I both would look at each other and say “is it… too quiet?” We were torn between desperately wanting them to sleep, and desperately wanting to go check on them and make sure they were still breathing (therefore risking waking them up).

Daniel, in particular, is making me totally neurotic. He seems hell-bent on becoming a belly sleeper. Unfortunately, when he gets there, he has apparently forgotten how to turn his head to the side. So then his face is straight down in the mattress. After turning him over the first time (see above), he seemed OK. I checked on him later in the night and he was about 95% on his belly, with his shoulder kind of pressed into the crib rails (tonight, anyways, I’m glad there’s no bumper on his crib). But his head was at least turned and I could feel him breathing, so I didn’t move him. Looked pretty uncomfortable, but he stayed that way from probably 9pm until 4am!! After he woke up, though, he repeatedly rolled onto his tummy and got stuck. Yet cried much harder when I went back in to turn him over. I wouldn’t mind him being a tummy sleeper if he would just remember to turn his head! Any suggestions, all you parents out there? And hey, I suppose he could be figuring out that when he rolls over at night, I come in the room. But he sure doesn’t seem happy to see me…

Alas, this is just one step in the very long road of being worried for my kids as they start to do one thing or the other on their own. As M said tonight, “just think, in 17 1/2 years we’ll send them to college. Imagine how paranoid we’ll be, then.” Indeed. At least now I can walk upstairs and see that they’re OK.

Overall, night 2 was an improvement over night 1. Now if I could just help Daniel remember how to turn his head, I think we’d be in business.