I just wanted to thank everyone on this thread who have given advice to me and others and for encouragement! My son has always needed a lot of parenting at night. We coslept from the time he was born until he was one. Then we moved him to a crib next to our bed. I was wildly sleep deprived for a really long time with him. We've been slowly but surely working towards helping him sleep longer and to feel happy about sleep rather than fighting it. He is 19 months old now, and this morning I literally cried tears of joy at how far we have come. When he turned one he was nursing 8-10 times a night and it took me a couple hours to get him down without tantrums or tears every. single. night.
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Last night around 7 ds came over to me and signed 'tired'. I said 'Ok, bud let's go brush your teeth.' So we brush teeth and get in jammies and read a book just like every other night. Then I sit down to nurse him and he just lays his little head on my breast for awhile and then kisses me and sits up on my lap. I sort of encouraged him to nurse because I thought he was just playing around. Well, he just wasn't interested in nursing. He climbed down, went and gave Daddy a hug and a kiss and then toddled into his room and pointed at his crib and signed 'tired' again. So I picked him up, he gave me a hug and a kiss, and then laid himself down and pulled the covers up to his chin and signed 'I love you' to me. So I said goodnight and left. I didn't go to bed for hours because I was so sure he was going to wake up needing to nurse. Well, he woke up once during the night and apparently saw the cat, because we heard him meowing and saying kitty for a couple minutes, I got up a few minutes later to go get him to nurse and he had fallen back asleep! He slept through to 7 this morning!
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I am just so happy that we chose to tough it out and continue meeting all of his (sometimes very demanding) needs surrounding sleep. The fact that he likes sleeping and will tell me when he needs a nap or wants to go to bed just makes me soooo happy. I have always had a lot of sleep issues and night time anxiety and so to see him starting what I hope will be a long and healthy relationship with sleep makes me warm inside.
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I'm a little sad because last night was the first night in his life he's gone down without nursing, but the day had to come eventually right? I'm assuming he'll nurse tonight and that we will have many more night time nursings ahead of us, but I finally feel like I'm swimming instead of drowning or just barely treading water. And if I could just stop worrying about him I could potential have a solid 8 hours of sleep for the first time in a couple years!
