15 months

The 15 month blog never got posted. Why? Because I wrote it, was going to find a picture, but she woke up instead, so that was the end of that. I went back to post it a few days later, but it all had changed, so I re-wrote most of it, but it never quite got posted. Sure enough, it changed again. That's life with a mini-toddler; it keeps changing, particually on the sleep front.

In the begining, we were having a particually diffucult time with lack of sleep.
We had a few nights where Rachael was feeding every 2 hours or less. After a few day, I was over it. I was tired, I wanted to do anything to get a night's sleep. I was going to night wean (immediately). I was going to hire a babysitter for a night's sleep. Then Rachael and I went to see a friend, had a chat and then came back to a more rational truth. Our truth, at that time is that either would most probably be damaging to Rachael. Yes, I would love to get a full night's sleep, but there's no harm in waiting a little longer to see if she'll be ready to do this on her own. I may have to night wean her at some time in the future, and I have read up on some gentle stratergies for if they are required, but I don't want to do it before 18 months. She isn't ready to comprehend the communication side that these stratergies use. And these nights are really handy to point out another truth to me- Rachael will remain an only child for a while longer. There is absolutely no way I am ready to go back to the newborn no sleep stage yet.

Then shse started to sleep better. Her solids intake increased (it was becoming almost non-existant when she was at home with me), she increased her water intake a lot, and went back to sleeping. She went from her 3 hourly feeds that she's had since birth, to feeding 4 hourly overnight, for a few days. Which is absolutely lovely. It means  I was still getting disturbed sleep, but more likely to get more complete sleep cycles in (woo hoo). And for a 9:30pm to 4:30am sleep on a work day, we've only had one feed instead of two. But it only lasted a few days, and we're back to fairly regular feeding again.
When Rachael is with either grandmother, or Jai, the increased cosumption of other food and drink mean daytime feeds are reduced to a feed before her nap, an afternoon feed and then bedtime feed. This is much more like what I expected extended feeding to be when I researched it, rather than the around the clock that we'd been doing. But if it's just the two of us, it's still regular feeding.

Since then, she's settled back into her old habits.

I can't rememver what else was happening, so I'll just start my 16 month post