Dummy Mommy

More sleep stuff.

Hopefully I can start blogging about something more interesting soon. But this is kind of funny.

Last night, E went down around 8pm again. (Hallelujah!) I put her in her crib with her bear blankie and her paci and I laid down on the bed in her room. Once she was solidly asleep I managed to sneak out and Rick and I decided once again to try to watch a movie. We got most of the way through the movie before she woke up again at about 9:30. I told Rick to finish the movie (luckily, it was one we'd seen before) and I would go up and try to resettle her. I had made the bed in that room earlier in the day so I laid down on top of the quilt and pretended to go to sleep. Once she saw me lay down she laid back down in her crib and thrashed around for a while as if trying to get comfortable but not actually complaining or going back to sleep. After fifteen minutes she seemed to be asleep so I tried to sneak out but she heard me and the jig was up. She stood up and looked at me as if to say "where do you think you're going?" At that point she did not have the paci in her mouth so I gave it back to her and laid back down on top of the bed covers. It took another 15 minutes before she finally seemed to be sound asleep with her back tucked against the front crib rail.

Before sneaking out I had a curious thought and decided to try a little experiment. E seems to be perfectly content as long as I am in the room - I don't need to be holding, rocking or nursing her. What would happen if she saw something she thought was me laying in the bed? Would it be enough for her to go back to sleep if she awoke in the night again? So I took a few stuffed animals and the pillow and shoved them under the quilt to make it look like a lumpy form (I was going for a realistic representation) was sleeping under the covers. I had created a sort of dummy of myself to fake her out in the middle of the night. I was hoping that if she woke up again she would look over and see what looks like me asleep in the bed and it would be enough to make her feel secure enough to go back to sleep.

I don't know if this little experiment really worked of if it was just a coincidence, but she didn't cry out for me the rest of the night. She was back to sleep by about 10:00 and we didn't hear from her again until 6am.

Maybe I'm not such a dummy after all...