Light at the end of the tunnel!

Two things have changed with Kai's sleeping over the last few days and you can see them both in this picture!
















First, the swaddling blanket. When he was born he loved being swaddled. He outgrew the size small swaddling blankets, but was able to "break out" of the large ones. See his hand? I was thinking that might be contributing to him waking up so many times at night, so we decided to put him down with his arms out of the blanket. He had a hard time sleeping that way for a couple of days. After waking me multiple times a few nights ago, we finally decided to just let him cry. I had been worried that he would wake Vera, but I decided a few nights of her awake was better than a few months of him waking and crying multiple times a night. The first night was difficult! The first time he woke, he cried for 30 minutes. That is not easy to listen to! The second time he awoke he cried for 45 minutes, then slept for the rest of the night. The turning point, though, came at the end of that time. He started sucking his thumb! So now, when the pacifier falls out of his mouth, he puts his thumb in. I know that's a more difficult habit to break than sucking a pacifier, but at this point I'm very thankful that he is able to self-sooth. The second night that he "cried it out" he only cried one time, though it was for 45 minutes. Last night was the third night and he didn't wake up at all until 6:15 this morning! I've read multiple places that for a baby it takes three nights of "crying it out" to learn to sleep through the night. It was really hard to listen to him cry and know that if I chose to I could stop it. But, to have his sleep through the night is worth the couple hours of difficulty. I know it may still take a few days before things are stable, but I'm holding on to hope that we've reached a turning point!