I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before, but I never knew how much I’d miss a full night’s sleep! The E-man has only slept through the night (without a single wake-up) twice, so everynight there’s a least one period of hunger or annoyance (annoyance at not being in bed with us, where he likes to be!).

Over Christmas break we decided that it was time to stop co-sleeping. I think my wife would have let him sleep with us until he was 18, but I thought 8 months was good enough. Before this change we would let him fall asleep on us downstairs while we read or watched tv, then we’d take him upstairs, feed him, and put him to bed permanently around 9 or so. A few hours later he’d wake up and come back to bed with us for the rest of the night.

Our new routine starts with a diaper change and a sleeper at 6:30PM. Next we read to him, followed by a nice warm bottle in a darkened room. He is then transferred to the crib. Now, the first night we tried this he didn’t fall asleep on the bottle and he cried in his crib for 24 minutes before falling asleep. It was the longest period of time in my life - I grew 124 new gray hairs as my wife and I sat in the livingroom staring at each other. It was horrible. The next night, however, he only cried for a few minutes, and within a week it was just a 10 second fuss before rolling off to sleep. It’s wonderful having so much time in the evening to get things done while he’s blissfully sleeping upstairs. He’s getting a lot more sleep than he used to, and he seems happier and healthier for it.

We tried to let him cry through his wake-ups at night (when we thought they weren’t discomfort, diaper, or hunger cries), but we didn’t have the heart to do it. So instead we get up and comfort him a little, which usually calms him down and leads him back to sleep. I guess with an 8-month-old I shouldn’t complain about just one wake-up a night - I know a lot of other people have it a lot harder than we do. But I would still love a full night of sleep!