At five weeks old, our daughter stopped breastfeeding to sleep. Her eyes would drift closed as she lay in my arms, her mouth going still, and I would gently unlatch her and lift her to my shoulder to burp her. Sometimes she would nestle asleep on my shoulder for five minutes, or sometimes only a few seconds, but soon enough her eyes would fly open and she would bounce up, wide awake and ready to play. 
Each time this happened, my heart sank. She was clearly exhausted; why couldn?t she stay asleep" 
The time she fell finally asleep was dragging out later and later each night. She had often fallen asleep between 10 pm and midnight?as much as I craved an earlier bedtime, I couldn?t figure out how to change that?but now it was stretching into the wee hours. As midnight came and went, I changed from counting down the hours until she slept to wondering if this would be my life from now on. I was exhausted and miserable, and each evening from 5 pm until whenever she fell asleep felt like a marathon of cluster-feeding and fussiness and sore nipples.  One night, she simply refused to fall asleep at all. Again and again she woke right after I finished feeding her; that magical time when she finally stayed asleep never came. It wasn?t until 5:30 the next morning that she finally drifted off. Along the way, I tried rocking her to sleep and walking around with her in a front pack, but after spending thirty minutes getting her eyes to drift closed, she woke the second I put her i...