It's getting better :)

Thank you so much to all my amazing friends that have called, posted very helpful comments and advice, and texted. You each have helped to encourage me to stick with this and that it will get better. :) And it is slowly getting better. Night time has been really good. For the past several nights Karis has cried no more than thirty minutes and then slept either all night or only woke up once to nurse and went right back to sleep. I couldn't ask for better! The night before last she only cried for 15 minutes and then literally slept for 12 hours and 15 minutes straight! The new routine at night has given me such a new found freedom. After I put Karis to bed, I went and had dinner with one of my best friends 2 nights ago, and we had such a good time. I wasn't able to do that before since Karis wasn't taking a bottle and was so hard to put to sleep. Being able to do things like that now -getting time for myself- has really helped to lift my spirits and make me feel a little more like myself again.

Nap time is very slowly getting better. We've had black out shades and a noise machine since we started this process. She is very drowsy and relaxed during the soothing routine before I lay her down. I just think I had unrealistic expectations of how it would go. Most people only talk about night time and the sleep training process, so I never really thought nap time would be so hard. But several of you said it took your little one almost 2 weeks to get the nap time routine down. So I definitely need to be patient with it and not give up on the process. Karis took a good nap yesterday morning, but not in the afternoon. That's the hardest part, b/c then she's a mess for the rest of the day. But today she is taking a really good afternoon nap so far. Small victories :)