Sleeping Like a Baby

With more frequentcy, Oliver's been sleeping from bedtime (7:30pm) to 3:30am in a stretch. Last night, he woke at 11pm, which is too early for his nighttime feeding. I rubbed his back, whispered some soothing words, and left. He fell asleep after five minutes or so, and then he slept until 4am. I'm pretty sure 7:30pm - 4am is his longest stretch between feedings. After that wake-up, he went back to bed for another two hours (which is his norm).

I'm very happy when he only gets up once at night. I have a rule that he doesn't get fed before midnight after he goes to bed for the night. Basically, if he wakes up at 10pm or 11pm, or even 11:50pm, he gets a back pat or a back rub, and that's it. If he wakes up after midnight, he gets a diaper change and nursed. Many nights, he gets up at 1am and then again at 4am. It really helps me, though, when he skips that 1am feeding (which has happened 3 times in the last week or two).

I'm thinking about extending the midnight rule to be the 1am rule, just to give him a push to sleep longer and soothe himself to sleep. I think, at this age, it's not terrible to have him go 5.5 hours between nursings.

In other news, he's outgrowing the last of his sleep sacks. I'm entertaining the idea of letting him use a blanket, but I don't know if that's a good idea or not. A friend of mine told me she tucks the blanket under the matress so her baby can't pull it out.

I know mothers always used to put babies to bed on their stomachs and then drape a blanket on their backs. Once the back-to-sleep rule started, blankets were no longer used because babies could accidently cover their faces with them by throwing their hands up. Ollie rolls over and sleeps on his tummy now, so I'm thinking I could just lay him on his stomach and lay a light blanket over his back, with the bottom of the blanket tucked under the mattress. Is this an OK idea? I think I might post the question on Facebook to see what other mommies think.