Earlier Bedtime?

For the past couple weeks since we've been living in Maryland, Kayla has started to get pretty fussy (almost inconsolably) around 7 pm every night.  I started thinking that maybe she needs to go to bed earlier and I may have to wake up 2 times to feed her at night instead of 1.  I mentioned it to a few friends and Justin and we decided we should give it a try for a week and see what happens.

I started reading a book by a pediatrician called Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child in hopes that it would help me a little bit with suggestions for solving potential problems or avoiding those problems in the first place.  I only have read about a chapter but it has some solid information in it.  Justin thinks I'm reading too much but it's really the only book I've read on sleep and it's not like I'm going to treat it like the Bible... :)  Anyways, I really don't think Kayla has been sleeping enough for her age, and therefore has been a lot more cranky recently.

So on Friday night, we decided to attempt the earlier bedtime.  Kayla fell asleep really easily at 6 pm but only for an hour.  Then when I fed her and tried to put her back to sleep after that at about 7:30, things went VERY quickly downhill.  She cried for about 2.5 hours while we desperately tried to get her to sleep.  I finally had to feed her again at 10 pm and she finally went to sleep at about 11 or 11:30 and slept through until 6:30 am in our bed.  This sounds glorious on paper, but 7 hours of nighttime sleep for a newborn means really cranky baby all day the next day.

And boy was she cranky.  We tried to get her to nap pretty regularly about an hour or hour and a half after each feeding on Saturday.  The naps were short but pretty frequent.  The main problem is, she will ONLY sleep right next to you or on you right now.  I hope this stops soon.  Last night (Saturday) she took a nap from about 6-7 pm and then we put her to bed at about 8 or 8:30 in the Pack N Play.  At around 9:30 or so she woke up and cried.  Justin went up to check on her and put her back to sleep.  When I came up at around 10, she woke up again crying.  I tried to feed her but she wasn't really having it.  In fact, she started SCREAMING crying.  I changed her diaper (and cried because literally she was screaming at me - it's really hard to hear your daughter do that when you are just changing her diaper).  We swaddled her and put her in the bed between us and she fell asleep...until 4:15 when I fed her and put her right back to sleep.  And she slept until around 7:15 this morning.

Today, she really has been pretty good.  Not to fussy, just pretty alert and playful.  Took a few naps, none longer than about an hour though.  I think her getting more sleep is helping with her temperament a lot during the day.  My main concern now is that she will only sleep when she is cuddling on or near someone.  The author of my sleep book stresses how important the right amount of "good" sleep is for babies, which I really do understand and believe.  My question now is what is more important, proper sleep or trying to get her to sleep on her own in the Pack N Play and not rely on someone being there?

Oh the joys of having a child! :)  My next post will be about my cloth diapering exploration!