Amelia's sleep training

If you’re an avid reader of my blog, then you’ll already know about Amelia’s sleep problems! So far, we’ve enjoyed the waking-up-every-30-minutes phase, the taking-two-hours-to-get-back-to-sleep-after-each-feed phase, the sleeping-for-an-hour-crying-for-an-hour phase and, worst of all, the no-sleep phase. We’ve tried countless things to try to help her sleep, but each only seemed to work for a week. As a last resort, Mark and I decided we’d leave her to cry for a few minutes in her cot before comforting her. It was awful. I couldn't bear to leave her for more than 15 minutes in total and I was starting to dread every nap time and always got tearful before bed time! However, now that Amelia’s six months, we’ve started the ‘Gradual Retreat’ sleep training method. This means we sit with Amelia every nap time, bed time and whenever she wakes in the night until she falls asleep. It might sound a bit smothering, but it’s been working so well and she hardly cries at all when I put her down to sleep now. She still wakes up two or three times to feed, but she now only takes about 20 minutes to go back to sleep, which is a big improvement on two hours! We’re relieved we don’t have to resort to having her in our bed in order to get 40 winks either; Mark and I were both starting to get sore backs. Hooray!

In other news, Amelia’s getting stronger every day:

but, surprisingly, less interested in food every day!

She’s only having a few spoonfuls of puréed fruit or vegetables a day, but she doesn’t seem too bothered at the moment. I’m sure she’ll get used to it though.

We’ve been keeping very busy with various baby groups and we’ve caught up with lots of people too: