Finally, sleeping like a baby....

I always wondered after I had a baby, what people meant by sleeping like a baby, when mine was waking up all the time to eat. I was exhausted, grumpy, losing weight like crazy since I was breast feeding and trying to sleep when he slept to make up for the lack there of....that left little time for anything else.
Before we had Finn, we had received this great book called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Jeff's cousin had three very well behaved little children, and I'm sure they read a lot of useful information. If you have not read it, and have a child that is not sleeping well, I recommend it. Actually, if you are going to have a baby soon, I say get it now (Yes Amy, I mean you!). It really helped us understand what a new baby was going through when it came to acclimating to night and day, as well as sleep cycles and how they differed from adults.
It made me feel better knowing there was not much we could have done in the beginning anyways, to change his sleep.
So when 6 weeks came around, we moved him to his crib, and tried to implement a new sleep arrangement. He did well at night, still waking to eat, but going down right away after he was done. he went to bed late, around 9 pm, get up a couple times and sleep in til late morning. It was a pretty good schedule for me for a while....but I was still tired all the time! Slowly, his bedtime started moving earlier, and some nights he even slept through the night. Then we moved his bedtime to 6 pm. It worked well, but he was waking up to eat again because he went to sleep so early. So a few night ago (now he is almost 6 months), I decided to stop going to him- cold turkey. Now that he is double his birth weight, they say he doesn't need to eat during the night. He can sustain himself fine metabolically. I thought, there is no way I could make it through another few weeks trying to ween him....I wanted him to sleep through the night NOW. So, we put him down at 6 pm, and did not go to him, no matter what cries he made. Not to check on him, not to rearrange him, not to give him a pacifier....he was in that bedroom with the door shut until the morning.
And now, he goes down at 6, without a peep. No fuss, no cry, he sleeps....and last night he slept from 6 pm to 7 am.... I am one happy mommy:) I hope it stays that way.