Sleeping habits

I just want to blog this down as a record (should I forget in the future) about how Laetitia's sleeping habits were developed. I have to admit though that a large part of our success is due to her pleasant personality more than actual "sleep training". Laetitia slept in our room in a little bassinet until she was almost 2 months old before she was moved to her cot in her room. And to let her get used to sleeping in different "environment", I used to let her nap on my bed and her cot as well during the day. But for nighttimes, from two months old, she has always sleep alone in her room.

As a baby, Laetitia had been breastfeed all the way up to 11 months however, unlike what most people says about breastfeed baby not sleeping through the night, she started to sleep through the night (from about 10.30pm to 5.30am) at exactly one month old. She was napping throughout the day too.

From there, it gradually moved to a more pronounced routine of going to bed by about 9pm and waking up for a feed around 6am by the time she was two months old. Now once in a while, maybe once every three or four days, she would wake up in the middle of the night for a feed. At that point, she was feed around 6 times a day (e.g 6.30am, 9.30am, 13,15pm, 15.15pm, 18.30pm, 21,30pm). Napping continues.

By the time she is four months old, she was no longer walking up in the middle of the night for a feed and would happily sleep through 8pm to 7am (and sometimes stretching to 8am/8:30am) with an average of 5 feeds a day (about 3 1/2 hrs interval per feed). At this point, I try to fix a routine for her naps. If I didn't remember wrongly, she napped 3 times a day until about a year old and then it became twice a day, once in the morning about 2 hours after she woke up and once in the afternoon around 3pm.

From that point now, she goes to bed by 8pm and sleeps for almost 12 hrs every night. And now that she is almost 22 months, she sometimes goes to bed a little later (but still before 9pm) and continues to sleep for 12 hours overnight. And she naps once a day, usually after lunch around 1:30pm for one to one and a half hours.

At some point after six months, I did practice what was taught in "Healthy sleep habits happy baby". I would let her cry for a while when she protested about going down for a nap or going to bed at night. For example, I would let her cry for 5 mins, check on her, tell her I love her but she needs to sleep, leave the room and if she crys, let her cry for 10 mins, repeat the process. Usually I never need to go into the room more then twice. Of course during the times when we travel or she is sick, everything goes out of the window but so far, she has been able to adjust very well to changes.