Last night was the last and final time I plan on nursing Layla... The night time ritual is generally, get ready for bed, turn on the music, turn on the night light and the projector that puts pictures on the ceiling and I will rock Layla and nurse her for anywhere from 10-30 minutes depending on how tired she is. Wellll... usually Layla will wake up 2-3 times a night if I let her cry it out... Most times I will just get her from her crib. The only problem to this is she will want to nurse through out the night. Not neccessarly to eat, but to pacify.

I have not slept a full night since Layla has been born.

So like most nights I managed to get in bed without Layla at about 12:30am. I probably got to sleep alone for maybe an hour. All of a sudden, she woke up! I picked her up from her crib and brought her to my bed. Unlike most nights

I didn't let her nurse. She wasn't having it.

Layla pretty much kept me up all night. She would cry, and cry, and cry. Sometimes I would peek at her to see if she had passed out since she was so quiet.

She would just be looking at her night light.

At about 6:30am I had probably had about one hour of sleep. She woke up again. It was light out by now, and I'm thinking, there is no way this baby is going back to sleep.

She did!

She slept for a bit longer after much crying. No nursing on my part. I am super determined to be done! Layla wakes up and I take her downstairs for breakfast. I would think that because I haven't nursed that she would be super hungry and want to eat ALL breakfast.

Once again I was wrong. :(

By 11:30am it is clear this baby needs a nap. I decided the night before to give her a bottle... yes I know.... but I am thinking maybe it will comfort her... So I get her a bottle which, I know she knows it doesn't replace me, so she refuses to use it... I take her upstairs and try to rock her to sleep. She just wants to nurse. So I lay her in her crib without nursing and she cries. Cries cries cries. So far, I am almost to the point I want to cry. Of course by now I have made it to the nearest Starbucks... oh how I needed you. So I do feel better, but nothing can fix the feeling of how hopeless you feel about not being able to just fix this issue and make everything better. I just want a happy baby who will eat her food and sleep through the night..

Is that too much to ask?

So all in all this has been a very hard first night without nursing. I am hoping by the end of this week everything will have gotten a little easier. Not to mention, what my girls are going through...

Stay tuned!