A common theme...

The central focus around our house lately has been sleep. This isn't to say we haven't been interested in sleep until now, but so far we have been concentrating on feeding, changing, cleaning, soothing, etc. Now that we have an idea of how to keep her alive, we're starting to concentrate more on us. For the parents out there, you already know that something as simple as sleep is never that simple. We didn't know this going in; apparently they left that piece of information off the brochure.

We've had a lot of advice on sleep. Books, friends, co-workers, and the Internet have all chimed in with their various bits of wisdom. We picked the pieces out that made the most sense to us, and tried the following things:

1. We keep her in the living room during the day with the lights on and TV on. We put her in the nursery at night so she knows the difference between nighttime sleep and daytime naps.
2. A nighttime routine of bath, sleeper, and food has been implemented. This is usually followed by two parents saying silent prayers.
3. We bought a noise machine that plays soothing sounds and put it in her nursery so that it can help relax her at night. It can play eight different sounds, but we chose ocean waves. We chose ocean waves because we like the sound, and it also has the unique quality of being the default sound when you turn the machine on.
4. We swaddle just her legs at night. She doesn't like her arms being restricted, but she seems to be fine with us wrapping her legs.

We think this is starting to work. We had the best night so far this week.. She went to bed at 9. She woke up three times for feedings but went back to bed each time right after and with no binky. We know she can do it, now we just need to keep up the pattern so that we can get some sleep on a more regular basis.

Wish us luck.