FLD4 Operation sleep

Each night we've been here, we've put the baby to sleep in her crib in our bedroom, with the baby monitor in the living room so Uwe and I can move about and watch TV without waking the baby. The crib has wheels so when we're ready to go to bed, we quietly wheel her crib into the living room.

The first night "Operation Sleep" went like this:

We setup the crib in our bedroom at the foot of our bed. After Astrid's evening bath and her bottle, we put her down in her crib to sleep and quietly exited the room and shut the door.

We had also setup the baby monitor so we could listen to her while in the living room.

I stayed up watching the Olympics until Uwe came home from his client meeting, so he could help me wheel the crib into the living room. We worked in tandem in the dark. Uwe took the front part of the crib and I manned the back of the crib. The crib barely fit through the doorway so it made it a little more difficult since we had to try and keep the crib from banging against the doorway. And the entire time we tried to be as quiet as possible because we didn't want to wake Astrid.

We got the crib into the living room and then noticed the bright blue light beaming out from the DVD player. Uwe stood in the doorway of our bedroom waving me in saying, "come on" in a whisper. Then Astrid started crying.

So I held her and rocked her for about 10 minutes until she fell back asleep and then I put her down in her crib, covered her with a blanket and quietly tiptoed back into our bedroom and shut the door.

Uwe and I were laying in bed giggling about our "Operation Sleep" when Uwe asked me, "Did you bring the monitor in with you?" The answer was "no" and suddenly we realized that she could hear us. So I quickly jumped out of bed, crept back into the living room, grabbed the monitor and slipped back into the bedroom.

Since Astrid was just on the other side of our door we could hear her wake up in the morning. A nice thing to note is that she slept through the night. For a month or so prior to our trip she has been waking up once in the night around 4 AM and would require a bottle to fall back asleep, so a full night's rest was a real treat for us. Since that first night she's been sleeping through the night. It helps that we can close the drapes in the living room so the room stays nice and dark.

On subsequent nights "Operation Sleep" has gone a lot smoother, however one night I reached down to feel around where Astrid's head was so I could cover her with a blanket, only to feel the top of her head. She was quietly sitting up in her crib. Probably wondering what the heck was going on.

Uwe made an astute observation that Astrid is no longer like a beetle now that she's mobile. There was a time when we could put her down on her back and she could move her arms and legs but couldn't roll over or get up (like a beetle) so she'd fall asleep on her back. Now she's mobile and as soon as you put her down she rolls over or sits up and wants to move around. Lately she's also been sleeping on my tummy so we're watching to see if she's a true tummy sleeper like her Papa.