Sleep changes

Sometimes change happens so gradually that it's hard to notice until you really make a conscious effort, or sometimes you notice it after you've noticed the change has come far along.
Baby Sasha's sleep habits had been slowly changing, a little more each night. I've started to notice the past few nights but when I thought about it I realized the change was more drastic than I originally thought, and started a lot earlier.
For at least 8 months, Sasha would wake up to nurse/eat several times a night. She stayed on my breast ALL night, as if I was a pacifier. This forced me to sleep on my side, which was a necessary inconvenience.
I first started to notice that she wasn't waking up so often. And then about a week or two ago, she started rolling away from me so that she would put her back to me, then she would fuss until I put my arm around her. She would hug my arm tight against her as she slept. I call it the teddy bear snuggle, because it felt like I was snuggling with a teddy bear. But basically it was like spooning.

At first that meant to me "wow, I can start to sleep on my back". But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that gradually, Sasha had drastically cut back on her night nursings. To the point where I think she was only using me as a pacifier for the last month or so. Not nursing. Now that she is turning away from me, she doesn't even need the pacification anymore. I don't think I noticed, of course, because I was mostly sleeping. And because it happened so gradually.

The more I think about it, the more things are starting to make sense. She's hasn't been eating so much at night. But she's also cut back her food/milk intake during the day as well so I guess she's not eating so much. I have to keep an eye on that. It also means that she is becoming less dependant on me at night. She is starting to drift off, move away from me, move around.
It seems like she is making the changes required to sleep on her own soon...and for the night. She isn't being awakened in the night by hunger anymore. She is self weaning herself from pacification.