Thursday, March 15, 2012

Sleep!

I feel like such a cliché: here I am, trying to figure out how to get my 4 ½ month old child to sleep more. I think the problem is I know it’s possible – she has done it before. When Alex was about 10 weeks old, we started implementing routines of eat, awake, sleep, loosely based on Babywise (but no crying it out). And it worked. Within a couple weeks, Alex went from getting up around 4-5 times each night to once or twice, just in time for me to return to work. And for about 4 days there, she didn’t get up at all. We gave her a dream feed, but other than that, she would sleep all night long. But then, she didn’t. Starting about 3 ½ months, she started waking up early – about 3 or 4 in the morning. Being the sleepy head that I am at that time in the morning, I would run upstairs, grab her, and bring her into bed (why TX houses have the master room downstairs is just beyond me!). I’d give her a boob, and we would all sleep until the morning. I would wake up, and try to slip out of bed without anyone waking up. Which worked – sometimes. And then a couple weeks ago, she started waking up at 1 am, and at 4 in the morning! I would be happy with continuing to grab her and co-sleep, except to be honest, I wasn’t sleeping with her next to me. I love co-sleeping, I really do. If it were completely up to me, and if I didn’t work, I would probably do that forever, or at least until she got embarrassed in college about it… But when she’s next to me, and especially when she’s sleeping with my boob in her mouth (her preferred method), I don’t sleep. I may drift in and out, but I’m always very aware of where she is, whether covers are over her, if the hubs is moving, making sure he doesn’t crush her, etc. Also my position when she sleeps next to me is so uncomfortable that I get up every morning with an aching back.

When I started getting comments from the hubs about spoiling our baby, I knew that our co-sleeping was coming to an end. Plus I was starting to get very bleary eyed. And I firmly believe that good sleep is very good for children. I have so many friends whose kids get up every night and crawl into their parents beds, or won’t go to sleep at night. My friends spend hours putting them to bed each night, or have to hang out outside their doors to make sure their kids don’t come out after bedtime. This is not how I want to raise my kids! I also have a few friends who have raised their children to be good sleepers, and these are also the same kids who can go out to a restaurant and sit nicely at the table with their parents. These are the kind of kids I want to raise – those that are pleasurable to be around! The parents who with well-behaved kids tend to be the ones who have rules, and have done some sort of sleep training. Hubs and I have talked about this a lot, and we both agree that we should do this (and he helps – you should have seen the spreadsheets he developed during daddy daycare!). So a few days ago, when Alex cried in the middle of the night, I would go to her, nurse her and then put her back in her crib. And she was fine. We do this twice each night – once around 1, and once around 5 am. Then I wake her up at 7 to eat and get dressed, and we leave for daycare about 7:45. But how do I get her to drop the middle of the night feedings?

Two nights ago, I was feeling awful and exhausted. I’ve been fighting a cold all week, and I was just done. So I asked hubs to do the bedtime routine, including giving Alex a bath and a bottle right before bed. Thankfully he agreed, and so I went to bed. In 4.5 months, this was the first time that Alex was put to bed by someone other than me. Other people, including hubs, my MIL, daycare people, have put her down for naps just fine. But nobody else has done the bedtime thing. I figured it would be fine, but I wanted to test it out before a planned event in early April – we’re actually going to get a babysitter and go out! Well, it didn’t go well. We have a routine where if Alex cries after being put in her crib, we let her cry for 5 minutes, then console her, then 10 minutes, then console her, and keep going back every 10 minutes until she sleeps. She’s never cried after the 1st 10 minute consoling. Until Daddy put her to bed two nights ago… It did not go well. After listening to her cry and hubs trying to get her to calm down for a few sessions, I finally got out of bed and took over. And she went to sleep instantly without crying! He told me good job, but it’s a problem. I can’t be there every night to put her to bed!

I started thinking about our routines, and I think I’ve been feeding her to sleep at night. Either by nursing or with a bottle, I put her into her crib either asleep or super drowsy. And then in the middle of the night, when she cries, I immediately nurse her and she falls back asleep. Maybe I need to console her in the middle of the night without feeding her? And make sure she’s more awake when I put her in the crib at the beginning of the night?

Last night, I fed her right before bedtime, and she was super drowsy. But I pulled a book out, and read it to her with a lot more enthusiasm and excitement than I normally do at bedtime. She woke up a bit, and started to play with the pages (so cute!). Then I sang her a song, told her I loved her, and put her in her crib with her wide awake. I gave her a lovie (small silky blanket), turned on her mobile, and walked away. She fussed, not really crying, for about 2-3 minutes, and then fell asleep. And amazingly, I woke her up at 7 am!!! For the first time in over a month, she slept all night long!!! Now I’m smarter than I was before – I know this could be a fluke. But I have hope again – maybe this will work.

But I’d love to hear from others about sleep tips. Honestly, I can handle the middle of the night waking. It’s a special time that we have, and I kind of miss it when she sleeps all night. Because I’m a working mom, I cherish the time we have together, which is also part of the reason I loved sleeping with her! But the real problem is we need to make sure that other people can put her to bed. The babysitter that will be over in April needs to be able to put her to bed, and Daddy needs to be able to do it too! So we’re going to try to have him do it more. I have this dream of a glorious little sleeper that wakes up in the morning in a great mood – how do I get there?

17 comments:

  1. What did you do differently than your husband when you got up that night and she went right down for you? We've (luckily) not had many sleep issues so I'm not sure I have a whole lot of advice. We would put Chloe to bed once she had fallen asleep in our arms in the living room or once she was pretty sleepy at that age. We also swaddled her, do you swaddle Alex? You might start b/c we quit while Chloe was sleeping in our room, then started it up again once she moved to her room and it worked great. Does Alex take a pacifier?

    Also, I'm not sure if you are solely breast feeding or supplementing with formula, but you might try giving her just a little more at her last feeding to see if she can make it longer through the night. Good luck! :)

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  2. I'm not going to be much help. We have no real pattern of sleep here except our bedtime routine. A will either sleep for 9 or 10 hours straight or he won't. I can't figure it out. However, I will say that he will go to bed for my hubs, and that's one thing I would suggest you try more. Maybe have hubs do the whole routine with you for two or three nights then let him fly solo. These little babies just love their mommies, so it's hard to hear them wailing for mommy!

    I think you've got a handle on it, though. Great job!! And you are right...you do want one of those super adjusted kids, not the crazy ones!

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  3. No advice but sending you good wishes! I am sure things will resolve shortly, thought it won't make it easy on you in the meantime..

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  4. A book that helped us a lot beyond Babywise was The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems. Similar philosophy to Babywise without cry-it-out and with more nitty gritty details. It might help. Other than that, it sounds like you're dealing with the very common and difficult issue of when to "spoil" (or comfort) and when to draw a more firm line. It's tough to figure out!

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  5. I'm no help! Penelope still sleeps with us, and nurses several times throughout the night... Apparently, I'm on the path to being one of those parents you know whose kids are always underfoot. Ahhh... oh well. Maybe you jut need to be a bit persistent and try the hubs-bedtime routine a few more times... let her get used to the idea.

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  6. I had a similar experience as yours... My son slept pretty good until he was four months old. I think he was getting up once a night around 3 months, and I was okay with that. Then at four months he started waking twice, then three times, then sometimes four times. And I was at a loss. Do I feed him? Do I let him cry? So I continued to feed him and I let this go on until he was 6 months old. I didn't mind waking in the middle of the night to feed him, etc. At his 6 month checkup our pediatrician told me he did not need to eat at night. That by feeding him I was reminding him every night at 2am to wake up and eat. I wasn't quite sure if I bought into that or not. She said that if everytime I woke up in the middle of the night and someone fed me, I would eventually be hungry at that time. Well, I talked about it with my husband and we decided to let him cry. I know all babies are different, but it took us two or three nights to get him to sleep all night. And he really didn't cry much at all. He woke up and cried, and I went in to console him, and left. He has slept through the night ever since... he is 18 months now. I know crying it out isn't for every baby or every parent, you have to follow your gut and your heart, you know what is best. And your little girl is still young yet and may end up sleeping beautifully in the next couple weeks on her own. Good luck!!

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  7. Well...E slept like a champ from about 3 weeks until 4 months. And then all hell broke loose in his crib. He was up every couple of hours for 6 weeks straight--sometimes every hour. It was the 4 month wakeful period for us. (Google has lots of info on it.) Then one day he started sleeping thru the night again. That 6 weeks was awful, but we tried not to feed him each time (even though that always calmed him down) and just patted him back to sleep. FWIW, E doesn't use a pacifier, so that was never a consideration nor did we rock/nurse him to sleep. We always put him to bed awake and he went down fine, but just kept waking up. I think his sleep patterns were maturing and he was on an every-two-hours wake cycle and couldn't sooth himself back to sleep. Once he figured it out we ALL slept better. LOL!

    Good luck!

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  8. I think sometimes when babies go through a growth spurt, it may mess up their sleep routine. Matthew pretty much sleeps through the night, with the occasion of getting up once a night for a feeding. Sometimes, we put him in his crib and if he's fussy, we just sit on the floor next to his crib and as long as he see's us, he usually will fall asleep pretty quickly.

    Good luck! You are doing awesome!

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  9. Alex, I think you're on to something. I don't know nothin' about nothin' from experience, as the pumpling is just a month old today, but from what I've read in the book Sleep 411, once kids are a couple months old and are more aware of their environment, it helps to put them to bed before they're totally zonked. I think the idea is that more or less falling asleep in one place/situation and then waking up in another is unsettling to them, and so they fuss. They actually say the same thing about pacifiers: if the kid falls asleep with one in and wakes when it falls out, the parents will be doomed to having to spend the whole night finding and re-placing the thing in the kid's mouth--at least until s/he is old enough to find it and put it back in on his/her own. Keep up the great work!

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  10. I still have not figured that out 100%. I'm now convinced that when I think Olivia is in fact sleeping thought the night, the very night he'll be up twice. We never did co-sleeping and we always put Oliver to bed awake and let him go to sleep (not letting him cry much though, he seemed to realise quickly how to go to sleep). Generally we have done the bed time routine together (mike bathes him while I prepare the bottle and pj etc, we all play a bit on our bed and we all go with Oliver to his room where he has the bottle and we chat quietly, listening to the music box. Kissed and cuddles and we close the door behind us). If he wakes I'll give him his soother and he goes back to sleep (most of the times!)

    Thanks sweetie for stopping by, I of course completely understand the difficulties of following other pregnancies that started at t he same time as the one you lost (happened to me too, twice) , but like you I feel close to my blog friends and so I'm happy to keep reading and commenting no matter what. I will check out PAIL and I think I will join too (I surely qualify!). Much love, fran

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  11. Ops! It was Oliver not Olivia! Damn auto-correct on the iPad...

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  12. I have no advice on sleep right now... that's a post for my blog ;) Sounds like you guys have done a great job so far of establishing some sleep ground rules and routine (me, not so much...). Looking forward to stalking your comments and updates!

    xoxo

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  13. dear god, I wish I had the sleep thing all figured out! It is still really on and off over here, even with a 10 month old :-(. We'll have a really good week, followed by a bad week, and no difference in what we're doing.

    Good luck!

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  14. I think it was at our 4 month check up that the Doctor told me to make sure I laid Maddie down AWAKE and aware in her crib. We started then and have never looked back!

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  15. I have no advice -- but I wish you good luck in getting in figured out!! I'm a little terrified of this phase once the boys are here!

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  16. My son didn't sleep through the night consistently until he was over one year old! So yeah, I can't give you any good advice. We tried having my husband go in and rock him back to sleep, and we tried letting him cry for a few minutes, but it didn't work. Or rather, I couldn't go through with it. So I was just a little more tired for a long time!

    My sister used the Ferber method when her son was 7 months, and he went from not sleeping unless he was on his parents, to sleeping through the night alone. That might work for you too!

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  17. I am there with you. There are so many friends and family giving advice and there are so many books. You wonder why movies and such make it look so easy. So...I have been trying a few techniques fromthe book no cry solution. I like it. I also do not think I will have the strength to do the cry out technique. So this seems natural. It is slow and has great ideas, logs and such. Basicaly a few things I have learned of course is to keep a schedule, and well it is baby steps. So..getting the baby to take few naps during the day, and when she goes to sleep, get to the point where she is not asleep but almost there for naps and sleep. It is the night awakenings that keep us parents sleep deprived. The book says thatbaby wake up at night, but not always wanting to be fed..so do not always pick them up..also get a good nighttime diaper becausethey do not always need to be changed. The book said sometime babies just cry and go back to bed..or of course they cry..and do not know how to get themselves back to bed. Let me know how it works out..I am just starting this new stuff..before I was up until 5 int he mporning, now he actually sleeps 5 hours straight!

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