We've come a long way baby...

I thrive on routine and schedules. Surely having a baby made me realize how anal I am about it and that is why I often blog about this very subject. It's not so bad (is it?) and I certainly don't apologize for being this way :) While some schools of thought center around letting baby make the calls in this area, I much prefer helping Sarah develop a routine so that I can interpret her cries, fussiness, etc. (I also learned that babies happen to do better with routines.) Knowing this, I had developed somewhat of a schedule shortly after bringing Sarah home but the results were very erratic at best and it needed some tweaking. At 7 weeks, Sarah's days went something like this:

7:07am - wake up

7:20am - false alarm (back to sleep she goes)

9:15am - wake up & feed
10:50am - nap
11:35am - wake up
11:45am - false alarm again
12:35pm - wake up (this time for good) and feed
2:30pm - nap
3:15pm - wake up (already??)
4:35pm - feed
6:35pm - nap
7:45pm - feed
8:30pm - bed-time
10:40pm - feed
11:30pm - back to bed
2:30am - feed

Erratic, no? ;) Within 3 weeks after hiring Dawnn, Sarah's days finally became much more manageable and mommy had her hands free again. Ahhh...the luxury of eating in peace and actually getting to use the kitchen :) Sarah's schedule post-sleep consultant at 10 weeks:

7:30am - wake up & feed
9:00am - nap
11:00am - wake up & feed
12:30pm - nap
3:00pm - wake up & feed
4:30pm - nap
5:30pm - wake up & light feed
6:30pm - bath-time
7:00pm - feed & night-night
10:30pm - dream-feed

So not to be a free advert for Dawnn but as you can see, hiring a sleep consultant not only helped us with Sarah's sleep habits but also gave us some much-needed predictability. We've had to sacrifice spontaneity for the time-being but now we can time our activities around Sarah's schedule so that we don't have a cranky-pants on our hands. And while we know the schedule keeps changing throughout the first year and beyond, we can work from the current routine so the changes are not as big a deal for us :)

PS. If you are one of the lucky ones who has an easy sleeper, CONGRATS and count your blessings! It was a tough slog for us in the beginning with a 'hard-to-sleep' baby so we felt we had no choice but to go the consulting route :)