Sleep update: 1 year

Little Bear consistently sleeps through the night now. Around 10.5-11 months, she was waking up about 1-2 times per night still, but Nick and I were both sick and couldn’t keep getting up with her. So we did super brief cry-it-out in the middle of the night. It only lasted a few nights and she cried for less than 10 minutes (probably closer to 3-5 minutes) each time. By this point she had started saying “nigh nigh” when she was tired, so we knew she understood. If she woke up, we would just go in her room and say “time for night night.” After just a couple of days, she stopped crying when she woke up. Now, if she does wake up in the middle of the night, we can now hear her in her crib saying “nigh nigh” to herself and she puts herself back to sleep.

We do still sometimes nurse to sleep for naps (which all the sleep books will say is bad, but never has led to a problem for us). At night, we read a book, she nurses, and then Nick takes her for a walk and she falls asleep on the walk. We have never been able to do the “put her down drowsy but awake” thing, but our routine is working fine for us for now, so we aren’t messing with it.