Sleep, glorious sleep

I may be jinxing myself by writing this, but Campbell is finally sleeping at night. Most evenings I put him to bed around 6:00, and he falls asleep without a problem. He then sleeps through until 4:30 or 5:00, eats and goes right back to sleep until about 7:30. This means that I'm getting about 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep and going back to bed for at least another hour after I feed him. I'm starting to feel human again - almost.

I keep thinking back to our sleep struggles with Ella and wondering whether we created the problems or if they were a result of Ella's basic temperament. I nursed her to sleep until she was about 8 months old. Then we resorted to the Ferber method, which really isn't as horrible as everyone thinks. Even after we got her used to going to sleep on her own, she still woke up at least once in the middle of the night until she was about 1. It was awful. We had to do the Ferber thing in the middle of the night finally.

Lily was much easier, all the way around. She fell asleep on her own without a problem and slept through the night at about 4 months. But then she stopped at 6 months. I kept feeding her in the middle of the night, thinking it was just a phase. Then I tried waking her up to eat at 10:00 so that she'd sleep through, but that didn't work. Finally, when she was 9 months old, I did the Ferber thing, and after three nights she went back to sleeping all the way through. I felt like an idiot for not having tried it sooner.

So now Campbell has suddenly started sleeping 10 to 11 hours straight at night. And as much as I'd like him to sleep an hour longer in the morning, I'm not willing to meddle with things. He goes to bed before the girls, which means Brandon and I can do our bath and story routine with Ella and Lily and not have to worry about Campbell. And he goes right back to sleep in the early morning - I don't have to entertain him or try to get him to go back to sleep. I'll take the one early wake-up call in exchange for the other benefits.