-Wrote this August 19, 2015 and was pleased to read it just yesterday.  I’m glad I write down my thoughts here even if they don’t prove to be publish worthy at some point.  I found reading this a good reminder of how hard I’ve work and how far we’ve come with sleep.  So grateful and very thankful I don’t have to go back and do it again!

iPhone photo of Maisy asleep on August 25, 2015… a few days after this post was written

Just as no one can prepare you for the love you will feel for your baby, no one can prepare you for the joy you will feel when your baby is not only willing but excited about nap time.  After one whole year of kindly and gently coaching Maisy into good sleep habits I am seeing some exciting fruits from my labor.

At about 3 months old we started this coaching process.   This was the roughest part of the job, in fact, it was the first part of parenting I loathed.  I had a very challenging baby when it came to sleep and I was frequently infuriated by the many many hours I spent (and usually felt like I wasted) in putting my daughter down to sleep – 45 minutes to 1 hour per sleep time for well over a year of her life… you do the math.

At about 6 month old we finally got into a groove.  The groove was arduous and consuming but it was a groove I was happy to call mine!  At this stage I gave in to the fact that Maisy was a die-hard cat napper and that there was no way to convince her otherwise.  So she took four half hour naps every day for about 3 months of her life.

At about 7 months old we transitioned from four cat naps to three cat naps.

At about 9 months old we transitioned from three cat naps to two 1 hour naps.

Between then she became a more regular 1.5 hour napper and would occasionally choose to sleep up to 2 hours.

For the past few days this girl is all about sleep.  She’s sleeping 2 – 3 hours at each of her two naps and is going to bed between 8-10pm (the latter is sure late but then she only wakes up about once or twice in the night!)  In fact, she’s so into sleep right now that she giggles and smiles as I’m putting her in her sleep sack.  Melts my worn out heart!