Night Weaning 2.0

I'm back for an update on our night weaning process.

I admit that I have not been very diligent because sleep is the operative need at this point in my life.

However, one step we've taken in this direction is getting a bedrail to put on the side-carred crib. I hope this doesn't appear cruel and unusual to my readers. It is working out fairly well. We have new phrases that we frequently use like, "Burkley's special bed!" and I've taught him how to get out and where the opening is. He enjoys hopping in there during the day and jumping around and arranging his stuffed animals and kicking back to relax with a book. He enjoys his "special bed" while awake and while I still let him nap in our bed, he's doing pretty well in the crib at night.

Nighttime sleep

We've only had the bedrail up for four nights.
Night one: He slept solid until 2:30, nursed, I put him back in, and he stayed there till 6:00 at which point I let him come in the bed with us. I didn't offer the breast and he just laid there inbetween us looking around and fiddling with his hands until he fell asleep on his own at 6:30. He slept until 8:30.
Night two: Literally the exact same thing happened, with much less fiddling and awake time. I allowed him to nurse back to sleep and he did so quickly.

Night three: He came in at 1:30, again at 3:00, again at 5:00, when he decided it was time to be wide awake. Gah! He was asking for all kinds of food, "Nana, Pear, Fruit Bar, Cottage cheese, sandwich," etc. So, I thought maybe he was legitimately hungry. I took him potty and we went downstairs for a snack. He had one bite of applesauce and got upset. So we came upstairs to play in his room and he got even more upset. I nursed him for about an hour when he finally fell asleep at 6:30am and slept until 9:15am.
Night four: Up to nurse at 1:30, and then I put him back. He came in the bed at 3:30 and again at 5:00 and I let him stay. He nursed almost consistently from 5:00-7:00 when we decided to just wake up.

Like I said, sleep has been my preference lately at only 9 weeks pregnant. So, I've been willing to nurse him if it means he'll sleep. I've also been taking the lazier approach (well, to me it feels lazy) of thinking that maybe my milk will eventually dry up due to pregnancy hormones and he will no longer want to nurse at night.

For now though, I'm happy with the small progress we've made, even if it feels like two steps forward, one step back. Each night is a new night and I also admit that part of the problem is that due to my exhaustion, I've been taking naps with Burkley, which makes him sleep a really long time in the middle of the day (like upwards of 4 hours) and that could be why he's just not tired enough to sleep very long at night.

Here is day one during a nap. He wanted the pillows in there, but I've since taken them out.

Some other notes on moving from bedsharing to simply roomsharing:
1. I'm careful to dress him a bit warmer since he's not spending most of the night snuggled right against me.
2. Discovering that the bed rail folds down onto my bed when certain buttons are pushed allows to me put him back in the bed much easier than the first night when I was still trying to heave him over the bedrail to put him back in his crib after he nurses. The heave-ho was making him angry, waking him up, and physically really hard for me to do from a sitting-in-the-bed position.

Any of my readers on the night-weaning journey? How about those on the other side of it? Did you allow it to happen naturally or did you help nudge your little one along?