Oh Mr. Sandman

While I was pregnant, I'm pretty sure that I prayed everyday that I would get a good sleeper.  I mean, I really, really prayed that my baby would sleep and wouldn't fight me about it.  My prayers weren't exactly answered the way that I would have liked them to be, but Annelise isn't too terrible and she's getting better.  Sometimes.

When we first brought Annelise home, she slept next to our bed in her Rock N Play.  She loved it, she slept well, and us parents were pretty happy.  When she turned four months, I knew that it was time to start working on transitioning to her room and to her crib.  And this is where I blame every single one of my parent friends for not knocking some sense into me.  Why didn't anybody tell me what a bitch transitioning to the crib is?  Huh???  Why didn't anybody tell me that I should work hard on having her sleep in her crib from day one?  Huh???  I mean, I'm not saying that I would have listened, and that she would have been in her crib full time from the start, but a little warning might have been nice y'all!

But, Drew and I trudged on.  We managed to get her sleeping in her room in her Rock N Play.  That was actually pretty easy.  Then, I worked on transitioning to her crib for naps.  That was a challenge, but we (read - I) did it.  Then, came nights in her crib.  O.M.G!  That has been a battle.  She still doesn't sleep all night every night, but we're getting better.  We had to trial and error a bunch of different things to figure out what would work.  We eventually landed on swaddling and a sound machine as the magic combination.

Now, we're working on breaking her of the swaddle, and putting herself back to sleep.  Now that she's starting to become more mobile, and her hands are out of the swaddle, she's starting to sleep in some of the cutest positions.  I seriously have been waiting for this time!  I love when babies sleep in cute ways. I mean, really love it!

Here you can just barely see the bottom half of her.  I'm pretty sure her head must have been right up against the rails.  Not sure how that is comfortable, but she slept like that.

As soon as I lay her in her crib, she turns on her side, and then later, she'll roll onto her belly.  I'd also like to point out that my child thinks she's pretty slick.  In the 7 1/2 months that she has been alive, she has never once rolled from her back to her belly.  I know that that is a pretty tough task because she has to use a lot of effort and momentum to swing herself over, and I never really pushed it too hard.  The first time she rolled from back to belly, was in her crib.  Drew watched it on the monitor.  She also did it a bunch of times afterwards, but only ever in her crib.  Silly girl would never do it while I was watching her.  She finally did last night for me.  She'll push up on her knees in her crib too.  If she crawls for the first time in her crib and I have to watch it over the monitor, I might just be a little bitter about that.  Girl just needs to crawl for me!