Zoë sleeps (finally)

Since that miraculous evening that Zoë discovered that going to bed at bedtime is an actual thing, we've been working hard at further developing her sleeping skills. She seemed to sleep just fine until I would go to bed, and then she'd be up every hour or so to nurse, which is basically what she's done since birth (nurse, like, every hour). She's 18 months old now, though, so at this point nursing every hour all through the night is ridiculous.

Because she proved that it is possible for her to sleep for multiple hours at a time until I am in the same room as her, we decided that proximity is the problem. She can smell me milk and when she smells milk she wants milk.

So a couple of weeks ago we took some austere measures and I began sleeping alone, in the living room, on the couch. This seemed to help quite a bit! She'd still get up to nurse once in the middle of the night, and would get up again when Andrew's alarm clock went off. But waking up twice is quite a bit different from waking up six or more times...

Yesterday we decided she was used to our new way of doing things enough that we took a big step and moved her bed back into Rachel's room. That's where her bed started out, but she never slept in it, not once, until we moved it into our room (and even then it took a while to get her into it).

I put her to bed around 9:00 last night. She cried for about five minutes before settling down, and then she was out for the night. It was so great! We cleaned our room, something we haven't done for approximately 18 months! We reassembled Andrew's desk—he's been working nomadically since Zoë was born! We put our Christmas boxes back up in the attic! We got ready for bed without tiptoeing around and leaping over squeaky floorboards! We chatted to each other with our voices above a whisper!

Zoë slept straight through the night until 5:00 in the morning!

And even then, by the time I walked to her bedroom she was back asleep!

She did get up at 6:00, but after nursing went back to sleep for a little bit.

We might just survive this child after all...