Sleeping through the night?

The last 3 nights in a row, she sure has! We've had 3 nights back to back where Kat has gone to bed between 11-12 and woken up around 7:00-7:30! Well let me correct that, she doesn't request food until that time. I hear her waking up in the night for a few minutes at a time, playing in her bassinet and talking to herself for a few minutes before putting herself back to sleep! This is really great and I feel downright human again. Not to mention I'm bursting with pride over my awesome little girl!

She's given us long stretches before, but never with any regularity. Her 'long stretch of sleep' used to last about 3 hours, then 4, 5, now it's 6 or 7 with regularity. She's been sleeping in 6 hour stretches for about a week and a half now.

At 10 weeks old I didn't expect her to be sleeping so well all on her own, and self soothing herself back to sleep. Her pedi told us in the beginning (when she'd absolutely meltdown everytime she was hungry without giving you a chance to feed her) that babies do that in the beginning mostly because they don't trust that they're going to be fed again (sad huh?) but once they realize that you're there and they don't need to be scared that they relax and trust you. Sounded silly at the time (she was a newborn after all) but I see where he was coming from! I think that since Kat can hear me (and pretty soon be able to see me from her co sleeper) at night, she doesn't need to cry to wake me up to eat, she knows that food and mommy will be right there as soon as she needs it so she relaxes and I'm getting good sleep. That's the feedback I'm getting from other co-sleeping mommies too, that their little ones would normally start sleeping through the night earlier.

It seems like once Kat really started to trust us, she's SO much more mellow and sweet. She knows she doesn't need to scream to get something she needs, she just needs to let us know. Now (usually, not ALL the time lol) she'll fuss for a second, then listen... then increase the volume and wait another minute or so... if you keep ignoring it she WILL start crying like crazy, but she just gently kinda lets us know- hey! I'm hungry! Granted if she's in pain or gets startled she'll start the big cries, but she'll calm down fairly quickly if she gets some snuggles and feels comforted.

I think that I got lucky the first time around getting such a fantastic, smart, sweet baby. She constantly amazes me and I SO love being her Mommy.