So much for the Mother of the Year award

I did something extremely stupid last night. When I put Brendan to bed, I forgot to put the side of the crib back in place. The crib is not a drop side crib; the top eight or ten inches are hinged to the rest of the side and secure to the corner posts at the top with deadbolts. My father-in-law made the crib for my niece, and we have it on loan to use for Brendan. When Brendan was little and not mobile I didn't worry about putting up the side. Ever since he got big enough to sit up on his own and get on his hands and knees, I've put the side up when he's been in it. And now, of course, he's mobile enough to stand up in the corner of the crib and potentially try to climb over the side. So this was a pretty dangerous thing for me to do. And then, to top it off, I made this a "cry it out" night; I did not go in to check on Brendan when he woke up and cried but instead let him put himself back to sleep. He work up at least four times from the time I put him in there, which meant at least four possible times for him to fall out of the crib. I am soooooooo glad he never got worked up enough to kneel or stand in the the crib last night.

As evidenced by the above, we're working on sleep training. Unless he really gets worked up and starts sobbing, we're letting him cry during the night. The last few weeks I've gone in if he's awakened after about 2 am and given him a bottle, figuring he'd be pretty hungry. But he needs to get weaned off of a nighttime feeding, and so last night I decided I was going to wait and let him cry. If he got really agitated, I would have gone in after him (and probably gotten him a bottle too; and I would have discovered my mistake with the side of the crib), but he eventually tapered off and went back to sleep. I'm hoping that he'll wake less and less over time, or at least cry less and less, until he gets to the point where he's shifting positions without ever actually waking up. We are still working hard to get him to bed at bedtime. He fights it pretty hard, and we're not exactly following what everyone recommends, which would be putting him down in the crib while he's still awake and letting him go to sleep on his own. I'm hoping that after he gets to the point where he's easily putting himself back to sleep in the middle of the night, we'll be able to start putting him in the bed while he's still somewhat awake. We'll get there.