Oh.

As you guys know if you've been keeping up to date with my incredibly boring sleep-related blog updates, Sadie was driving us both batty with the random 5am wake-ups, at which point she always wanted to eat before going back to sleep for another 90 minutes if we were lucky.

It was what finally encouraged me to start considering making the switch from breastfeeding to formula, something I wasn't especially inclined to do otherwise -- everyone kept telling us that formula fed babies sleep longer. To which I wanted to say, "But you guys don't understand. She always slept FINE up until six weeks ago. Hunger isn't the problem. The problem is...crap, I don't know what the problem is. Babies are weird."

Making this switch -- even considering making this switch -- has inspired a deep-seated guilt that I wasn't prepared for. Because why would I feel guilty? Fewer than 20% of American mothers are still breastfeeding their children past the age of six months, and here I've been going for seven and a half. The reasons for this guilt are many, and I won't go into them in too much detail -- not because I don't want to, but because I don't feel like I should have to, and the fact that I still do is all kinds of messed up. Let's just say that it can be difficult to be a modern American mother and speak the word "formula," if you aren't prepared to deal with a lot of raised eyebrows and tsking.

So anyway, we talked about it a lot and I cried a couple of times and ultimately I came up with this ABSURDLY complicated gameplan for weaning Sadie which involves not just slowly increasing the number of bottles she takes per day, but also decreasing the amount of breast milk in each bottle while upping the amount of formula, which by the way MUST BE ORGANIC and kind of smells like fish and the first time I sniffed it I thought, "Sadie is going to HATE this stuff and she will never forgive me for not letting her nurse until she was three years old like the crunchy mothers say I should do and OH MY GOD I AM A BAD MOM."

Okay. Well. This week, we implemented The Plan.

The Plan, I should mention, involved not just introducing formula into her diet, but also discouraging her 5am wake-ups by trying to allow her to cry herself back to sleep. We've been prepared for a very rough week, in other words.

Here's how it went:

Monday: Nursing, bottle, bottle, bottle, nursing, bed. She couldn't get enough of the bottles. By the end of the day she was like, "Oh, what? Boobs? No really, I couldn't drink another drop." And then she slept through the night without a peep.

Tuesday: Repeat of Monday.

Wednesday: Repeat of Tuesday, with the exception that I made the stupid error of skipping a feeding mid-day because she didn't seem hungry. Along came the 5am wake-up, finally, at which point it was like a big flashing light in my head said: YOU IDIOT, SHE'S BEEN HUNGRY THIS WHOLE TIME. THAT'S WHY SHE'S WAKING UP CRYING AT 5AM.

So, duh. There you have it. We've been beating ourselves up for making the switch to formula, convinced we were doing it for purely selfish reasons, only to discover that Sadie is fuller, happier and sleeping better all around. I kind of wish I'd done it sooner, except that I don't, because every time I think about the fact that I won't be sharing that special time with her anymore, those silent 5am feedings where she falls asleep in my arms in the rocking chair while the world sleeps, it makes me want to cry a little bit more.