August 29, 2000 - Tuesday
Harry has slept through the night twice in a row now. I'm sure it's just coincidence, but we've been working on a new theory since Saturday and, who knows, maybe it has already helped.

Since we moved into the new house, Harry has been sleeping in his own room, but we've still had the baby monitor on and have woken up when he has started to make noise. The problem is that Harry's mother has usually then has fed him. That puts him back to sleep, but it also ruins her sleep and perhaps just gets his body used to eating at regular, but awkward hours. We happen to hear a news piece on the unfortunate trend away from three square meals per day in this country and how, while the body will adjust and form new habits and expectations, it rarely gets the same nutrition. And so, it occurred to me that Harry's body was in the habit of eating at 1:00am and 4:00am. Since he really shouldn't need the milk during the night, especially now that he's eating three meals a day, we shouldn't encourage it. What's more, his mother says that it take very little milk to get him back to sleep.

Our plan was to try to encourage Harry to simply go back to sleep without eating. If need be, we could bring him into our bed to make him feel more comfortable, but we'd resist feeding him. And, that's just what happened. Saturday night he awoke, but once warm in our bed he was back to sleep without trouble. Sunday night and last night he did not wake up at all, sleeping almost until we had to leave for work.

I suppose the down side to our plan is the classic thinking that a baby needs to learn to calm itself and go to sleep on its own. From that perspective, we should just let him go back to sleep on his own and we discussed simply turning off the monitor. But, I'm not sure I buy into that point of view. Harry has done several things over the last few months - with eating, changing, playing - that suggest he's interested in learning to be independent in all aspects of his life. It seems to me sleeping alone happily will come. Maybe we're spoiling him, but at this age, it seems to me that the most important thing he can learn is that we're looking after him, that we'll take care of him, and that he should trust us. If those things are accomplished in his first year, perhaps he'll trust us to go to sleep in the second year.

For now, we're just trying for a good night's sleep on a regular basis.


Comments, opinions?