Persistence Is...

My daughter is 5 1/2 weeks old.  She loves to be held and cuddled and put to sleep in anyone's arms.  She's an absolute sweetheart...
Problem: She hates (or hated) sleeping on her own and couldn't get herself to sleep unless she was rocked.  Solution: I found a fabulous book called "The Sleep Sense Program".  It's written by a lady who's a specialist in infant sleep and has three kids of her own that she's used her methods with.  Fabulous!!  Now, I can get my little angel to sleep on her own.
2nd Problem: This is tough work!!  We are three days into our new sleep routine and sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. 
Solution:  Persistence.  The premise behind this whole program is that babies and young children thrive on routine.  So, we now have a sleepy time routine that we do every night, bar none: Bathtime, nursing, and a story.  Then it's sleepytime.  Here's how it goes:  You lay the infant in her crib drowsy but awake.  The goal is to get her to put herself to sleep.  If she fusses, let her fuss, but if she starts crying, pick her up, get her settled and then put her right back down.  (Infants under three months of age should NOT be left to "cry it out".)  So the first day, we used this method starting with naptime during the morning.  Seven trips out of the crib and 40 minutes later, she was sound asleep and slept for 3 hours!!  Two more successful naptimes ensued that day.  That night, she slept on her own in her crib from 1045-230, then we nursed and we fell asleep in my bed.  That's supposed to be a no-no, but that's what happened!! 
Yesterday, her first morning naptime, we only had two trips out of the crib and she was zonked.  Then we had an outing, she fell asleep in my arms, but she slept, and then we came home and for our afternoon nap, mommy held her because we had company.  Big mistake.  When our early evening naptime came, she never settled to sleep and when we started our sleepy-time routine, she was exhausted- OVERLY so.  I never knew infants should only be awake for about one hour at a time... if they start yawning or rubbing their eyes, they should have been put to bed already.  Anyway, by the time 1045 hit last night and she was still awake and so upset because by now she had been up since 430 in the afternoon, mommy gave up.  She went to sleep in my arms and slept beside on me in my bed.  BUT, we haven't given up!!  We're now in our second successful nap of the day in which she got herself to sleep.
This is hard work!!  Mommy's exhausted, BUT baby is learning to sleep on her own and that's a gift that I am happy to give her.  Even if my ear drums are blown out from settling her cries so much!!