Today Ingrid fell asleep on her own for the first time, with no crying and no help from me. This may sound about as newsworthy as “Dog bites man” but for me this is a big thing.

It’s been 4 weeks since Ingrid first fell asleep in the bed (although with a lot of help in the form of rocking and patting). But it only worked during the day: in the evenings she got very distressed as soon as I put her down on the bed. So for her night-time sleep she’s still been falling asleep in the sling.

This week she moved into her cot, and getting her from sling to cot seemed like a fair bit of trouble… so I thought I’d try without the sling again. And it worked surprisingly well. There was a little bit of crying that was easily stopped with some rocking, but she never got really upset.

Today I put her down in her new cot, propped her up with a heavy firm pillow behind her back, and waited for her to show her displeasure. After a minute or two I got bored waiting so I left the room and decided to come back as soon as I heard a peep. And it never happened. She put a thumb in her mouth and lay there until she went to sleep (which took around 15-20 minutes). Totally awesome. That was over 2 hours ago and she hasn’t woken yet.

I am so impressed with my baby, and so glad that I had the patience to let her learn this skill at her own pace. (I hadn’t been at all sure about that!)

The picture was taken during a daytime nap. She’s sleeping in her lovely Grobag, for which I really want to thank my friends at work! I don’t think she could have managed this evening’s performance without it, because she would probably have kicked off her covers before she had time to fall asleep.