We are pretty pleased with the way Lucy is doing these days: she plays contentedly, falls asleep for naps and bedtime easily, nurses happily, and looks _fabulous_ in the clothes I can’t resist buying for her. But there is one thing that makes us come near the end of our patience: Lucy has this habit of waking up 45 minutes after going to bed for the night.
p{color:gray}. Photo: Lucy loves to be awake. But what to do when she should be sleeping?
Now, I’ve read about how babies have 45-minute sleep cycles, so there certainly is a reason for this happening. We’ve tried lots of solutions: going in to comfort her right away, “hovering”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/lucy-watch-2/ beside her crib for 20 minutes around when she usually wakes up, doing the “Baby Whisperer”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743488938/octothorppres-20 “wake to sleep” technique of jiggling her after she has been asleep for 25 minutes. All of these work, but only part of the time; and taken together, they’re quite work-intensive.
Most of the time, one of these techniques will put Lucy back to sleep quickly or prevent her from waking up at all. Usually, if they fail, Lucy will go back to sleep again if I nurse her in the dark. But sometimes she is just awake, and there we are, watching a movie at 9:30 pm with Lucy playing in the “laundry basket”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/good-clean-fun/. This has been happening more often than we’d like.
It is not that we mind having Lucy awake. In fact, it is much less stressful to have her happy and playing with us than sitting on the couch wondering if she is going to wake up. But we know that Lucy needs her rest, and having this late bedtime isn’t good for her. And it isn’t good for us, either! Mama and Papa need grown-up time to be together.
The few times we tried to let her cry didn’t work so well, although perhaps we just weren’t committed enough to let her wail for a good long while. We may try this again, but we hesitate to go this route as Lucy’s scream-y, hysterical crying is much more unpleasant than just getting her up. If it will really work, then it is worth it to ride it out for a few days. But what if it doesn’t? Then we’ve just taught her that sometimes when you cry no one will come to be with you, and in the meantime Mama got a stomachache from listening to all that hollering.
I know many people who have had success with letting their baby cry. In fact, we often let Lucy cry for a few minutes to fall asleep, and that works fine. But when Lucy starts to ramp up into frantic shrieking, I become more and more convinced that she could be in the opera someday, if she wanted. Most of the cry-it-out advocates I know either have a) a baby who cries in a much gentler way, or b) a second floor for the baby to cry on. Am I wrong about this? This girl’s voice really carries — with drama.
Our current plan is to try to get her on a very regular schedule during the day, as per “Weissbluth’s”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449004023/octothorppres-20 recommendation. Awake at 7am, naps at 9am and 2pm, 7pm bedtime. Hopefully, being on a regular schedule will magically eliminate her 45 minute wake-up. But we are running out of ideas quickly. Any tips out there? We’d love to hear them!
Some babies just have a later bedtime than we would like. Mo will not go to sleep prior to 8 p.m. Sometimes he’s up until 9:30. But once asleep he sleeps until bottle time in the a.m. and then he also has an early morning nap. Maybe Lucy needs a bit of a later bed time. The 45 minutes of sleep could be rejuvenating her and allowing her to stay awake longer when she does wake up.
Babies definitely need lots of sleep, but I’m a big believer in listening to your child’s specific needs and rythyms and trying to work with them. So maybe an 8 p.m. bedtime would solve the problem. If anything it’s worth a try one night or two, to see if she’s able to sleep more soundly when put down just a bit later.
I have a night owl in Kaia. That girl can stay up til 11 or 12 at times. I still say she is bound for Broadway! She loves to stay up late, sleep in, full of drama and loves to sing.
Oh Mo’s nap schedule is more along the lines of: 7:30 or 8 a.m. (1/2 hour to full hour), 11or 12 he goes down for a 2 hour and then 3 or 4 he’ll go down for 1-1.5 hours.
Well, I don’t really have any tips to keep her asleep beyond the 45-minute point. Benjamin went through a similar phase with naps (not at night) and the solution for us was to roll him in a blanket so his arms were pinned down because he had been waking himself up by hitting himself.
As for the crying it out – it’s definitely not an easy thing to do. We had to do it with Benjamin – just because of the way his personality is, none of the seemingly gentler techniques would work for him. If we went into his room to try and pat him or something like that to soothe him when he woke up, it would just make him more upset that he could see us, but we weren’t picking him up. We do have 2 floors, but I never went downstairs while letting him cry it out – I guess I felt that I needed to be closer by than that, so I would be in our bedroom across the hall from his. Here are some things I did that really helped when we decided to let him cry:
– set a time limit. We started with 30 minutes, you could certainly start with less if you wanted. When they are crying it feels like an eternity, so it’s very helpful to look at the clock and know that it’s really only been a couple minutes. We also were willing to extend the time limit. I think the first time we let him cry, we actually ended up giving him an hour because after 20 minutes or so he started to calm down and have periods of silence, so we kept giving him 5 more minutes until eventually he went to sleep.
– sometimes they scream loudest right before going to sleep. Benjamin is one of these. He’ll scream full out for a while, then start to calm down and have periods of silence. Then, sometimes, he would start screaming full out again, such that I thought I should go get him, but then he would stop and that would be it – he was asleep.
– get crib bumpers. This may not apply if Lucy stays tightly swaddled, but Benjamin would sometimes get his arm or leg caught out of the crib. Having the bumpers (I opted for a mesh, breathable variety) meant that this wouldn’t happen and I didn’t have to worry about it.
– do something else. I would read, clean or even take a bath or shower (harder to hear the screaming over the water running) so that I wouldn’t be sitting there completely focused on the screaming.
– do it with both parents home. It’s helpful to have the moral support of another person and someone to help you stick to your initial resolve to allow the baby to cry for however long, rather than giving in after a few minutes of intense crying because you feel guilty. I have read that sometimes it’s better for the mom to leave since it’s generally harder for her to handle the crying it out, but I personally could never do that.
I think that trying it for a few days will not teach her that sometimes no one comes when she cries. I felt horrible about letting Benjamin cry, but when he woke up the next morning happy and none the worse for wear, I realized that it really hadn’t done him any harm. Good luck to you as you try and cross this hurdle!
Nicole — How long was it before he was falling asleep pretty easily?
We’ve recently started to put Josi to sleep on her belly. She’s 9 months old and doesn’t have a pillow or blankets in the crib with her, so we feel it’s safe. Anyway, it allowed us to get rid of the swaddle completely and Josi now sleeps more soundly. She doens’t wake for the 45-min mark anymore. It might be something to consider or ask the doc about.
Oh, and she now has a ‘lovey’ that she takes to bed: the burpcloth! Seriously, she loves the thing and clutches it when she is upset, happy, bored, … Some parents try to introduce something to their babies in hopes that they will use it for comfort (or a sleep cue) at night.
We do the belly/side to bed and it helps to. But I think there is no one way. Madelyn will go down for 4 hours sometimes and 30 min others. Dana Obleman says to have key phrases such as “sleepy time”. So when maddy wakes I let her scream for 2 min (that is all I can take at night time when I am tired to) then I go in and say sleepytime over and over again as I lay her on her side or tummy. Now that she knows the phrase she calms right down and is almost always asleep again in 5 min. But there are times when I just need to pick her up and lover then start the night over again. I wish there was a easy way to do it, but the more we go and the more moms I work with the more I have learned that each baby has their own disposition and it totally effects their sleep habits. But what ever you do make sure you and jon set a plan of action and stick too it. Often we try only for two days and the baby doesn’t learn the skill you are teaching her and so of course it doesn’t work. at least that is what Dana Obleman says and I have found very true. Blessings.
Jon – we’ve had to let Benjamin cry a few different times in his life just to break a waking habit (we got him out of the habit and then something would happen like teeth or a developmental milestone and the habit would start again and so we’d have to do it again). Anyway – each time it only took a couple of nights, maybe 3 for it to work. Also, after the first night, the time he spent crying decreased each night. Now Benjamin is a baby that makes transitions very rapidly. For example, many children when dropping the morning nap, will take it one day and not take it the next and kind of alternate days for a while before the nap completely disappears. With Benjamin, it was there consistently every single day and then one day he didn’t want to take it and never took it again. So, the 3 days of crying it out might be shorter than it would be for a baby that doesn’t transition as quickly, but I really don’t know.
When Andy and I were new parents we shared our parenthood with Paul Riser and Helen Hunt watching Mad About You every Thursday…..(believe me hollywood bedrest is nothing like real bed rest!) Neither of us will forget the episode where the proud parents decided to let their baby cry it out for the evening. The episode itself was ground breaking because the whole 30 minutes was shot without commercials and in one take! You see them reading all the books and making the big decision….and then they settle on the floor while there little one cries…..I hate to be a spoiler because the episode is really amazing. But after their daughter has finally fallen asleep one of the parents looks at the other and says. Well she is asleep….. we taught her that she she doesnt need us. Isnt that what we wanted?
We have not needed to let our kids cry it out….and personally i dont think that i would have the stomach for that. I too would suggest a later bedtime and perhaps a shorter afternoon nap. I know fresh air wipes out our kids….perhaps a late afternoon bundled walk may help.
I know that you will find your way with grace and sleep on this part of the journey.
I forgot to mention one other thing – Benjamin had started getting up every night around midnight at about 6 months of age. At first we thought he was teething so we would go in comfort him and rock him back to sleep (sometimes taking 45 minutes or more to get him back to sleep). After several weeks of this and no sign of a tooth, we finally decided to let him cry for half an hour. That was the first time we let him cry and like I said, we actually ended up letting him go for closer to an hour because he kept calming down and he did eventually go to sleep without our intervention. It took 2 – 3 nights and the midnight waking disappeared. Afterwords our thoughts were – why on earth didn’t we try it sooner? So, obviously, letting him cry was not overly traumatic for us in the long run and it enabled Benjamin to get more sleep in the long run.
But to each his own – I think that it really does depend on the baby’s personality. I have a friend who could get her children back to sleep simply by going in and patting them when they would wake up. Since she never took them out of their crib, they wouldn’t develop a waking habit. This never worked for us and really the only solution we found to work with Benjamin was letting him cry. I’m very curious to see what happens with Ella – perhaps she’ll be more mellow than her brother, but that remains to be seen. At 6 weeks of age, it’s a little too soon to call it!
All of these comments are so helpful. We have to decide what to do and then just do it! That is one of the hardest parts of these days — we haven’t made a firm commitment to a strategy yet.
Keri — so, you aren’t swaddling Josi anymore! Any tips on that transition? (From anyone?) For awhile we tried one-arm-out swaddling for naps (pretty successful, although it took longer for her to fall asleep) and for nighttime (worked great for one night, then awful for a couple nights with multiple wakings). The one time we’ve tried to put Lucy down without being swaddled, she just kept rolling over and getting up on her knees, like it was time to play. She didn’t get that it was time to SLEEP.
We aren’t ready to try no-swaddling again quite yet, but I’m hoping soon. It would feel so much more human for her to be able to roll over on her side or whatever. Right now, she is fully-swaddled for every sleep — we figure “one transition at a time.”
Ann,
An Advisory Board member just got married and was asking me about different Wedding pic. Ideas. Can you tell me the company that makes you box for you wedding pics? or can I get Jane’s # or email to ask her?
Thanks.
Once the kids can roll, stand and crawl, nights are so much harder…even more so when they don’t know how to sit back down. Work on that right a way with standing!! We will pray for you and please pray for us as Maddy grows teeth and doesn’t sleep!
Do you think Lucy is perhaps attached to her swaddling blanket? Maybe you could put her down with the blanket, but not swaddled?
A partial swaddle that we used was to lay the baby on the blanket about a foot or so from one edge. Pull that one edge up over their arm and tuck it between their body and their other arm. Then, roll the baby in the blanket (seriously – I would turn them over on their tummy and then back over rolling them up in the blanket). This works to keep their arms pinned at their sides, but it allows their legs to be free. I’m already using this partial swaddle with Ella – she seemed tired of having her legs restrained.
We only started the non-swaddle when we started putting Josi to sleep on her belly. It was as if the mattress was the swaddler then and served to keep her cozy. One thing was in our favor though: she’s not big into rolling, so once on her belly and sleepy, she generally stays there. For us, sleep has been the biggest baby challenge. Over here, we consider 4 night wakenings (between 2 kids) to be a good night.
I have found that putting a baby to sleep on the belly has been really helpful as well. I put Charles on his tummy when he was two weeks old…..shhhh….dont tell anyone…..I guess I felt that if it worked for me when I was a baby and I checked him periodically it would be okay. naomi was a bit older but sleeping on here tummy was a preferred method also. Now I think she wakes herself up during naptime because there is no one cozy with her… as she sleeps with us at night. I wish I would have known about the arm only swaddle with the legs out a long time ago.
My dear Ann and Jon,
I envy you having so many friends who are willing to share their sensitive feelings/experiences in response to your questions. I read all the responses so that I may learn more about these wonderful days that you are experiencing. So many write to share their experiences! You are truly fortunate to have these friends. I know that Mom and I feel the same admiration for you AND your friends. You are truly blessed as you share Lucia with others in this way.
My love to you AND your lovely daughter…
Tummy is the only way Mo will sleep. If I lay him down on his back, it’s all over. I lay him down on his side, and he immediately flips onto his belly, inserts thumb in mouth and he’s out. I never did swaddle though. I never got the hang of it, and with my claustrophobia couldn’t bring myself to keep trying.
Grandpa Boyd,
I just have to say that Lucy is blessed to have such a grandpa. I read some of you posts and get teary eyed. I feel my parents are leaving a wonderful legacy for our children….but I wish that they were a bit more computer savvy.
I can tell that your grandchildren are truly your crown as it says in Proverbs17.
Blessings to you.
Nicole Wetzel
Gabe wasn’t a swaddled one, so I can’t speak to that. We did have him on his tummy to sleep as soon as he could lift his head readily… which was pretty early… he had a strong neck! Mal is sleeping with us still… so we’ll see what he is up to later.
Ben & I were comfortable letting Gabe cry it out for 10 minutes at a time. If he kept it up for 10 minutes we’d check all his usual thing (diaper, food, etc) and then invest another 10 minutes in cuddling and hugging… then he’d go back in the crib for another try. Sometimes it took 3 rounds or so… but it worked and he is, at two, a pretty good sleeper. Nicole’s suggestions are all good ones but the ones I can endorse COMPLETELY are 1) watch the clock. one minute does feel like forever, so without an objective observer (time) it is nearly impossible to make it through 10 minutes of your child crying. 2) Have someone else there for moral support. It only took Gabe a few nights to get his sleep on with the crying method… and I intend to do the same modified cry-it-out with Mal. Good luck to us all!