Lucy and I decided to undertake a research project while Jon was away. The topic: “Let’s see if Lucy can sleep through the night without eating.” So far, we have learned a lot — like where the edge of insanity is for Mama. (Just kidding.)(Sort of.)
I’ve been thinking that Lucy is probably able to sleep longer at night than she has been recently. She used to sleep up to eight hours sometimes, but lately we’re lucky if we get six out of her. I figure, while Jon is away, we might as well try soothing her at night instead of feeding her — that way, only one of us has to hear the crying. Here are some things we have learned:
* Lucy is totally capable of sleeping through the night without a feeding.
* Lucy seems to be crying not from hunger, but because it is hard to fall asleep again.
* Ninety minutes is too long for Mama to be soothing the baby to sleep at 4:00 am. It almost made her crazy this morning. Two more minutes and she was going to just feed the girl, even though she wasn’t hungry. But Lucy fell asleep just in time!
* When Lucy doesn’t poop all day long, she is extra-hard to soothe to sleep in the middle of the night (see above).
* Lucy has adapted easily to taking a “dream feed,†as described by the “Baby Whisperer”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/secrets-of-the-baby-whisperer-by-tracy-hogg/. Mama is much happier feeding Lucy at 10:30 pm than 1:30 am.
Lucy and I decided to go all out and tackle naps in the crib, too. For the past eight weeks or so, Lucy has taken all of her naps in the swing. But lately, we’ve been running into problems: difficulty falling asleep in the swing, waking up after 45 minutes of sleep, not to mention the lack of portability. Plus, Jon and I have found ourselves eating lunch as late as 2:00 pm so as not to disturb our kitchen-swinging baby. We’ve learned quite a bit on this front too:
* Lucy has been falling asleep very easily and quickly in the crib! Much quicker than in the swing — often only 3-5 minutes.
* Lucy continues to wake up after 45 minutes of sleep (whereas I think she would enjoy at least a 90 minute nap).
* The Baby-Whisperer-recommended technique of “wake-to-sleep†works about 50% of the time. (The theory is that if you jostle your baby a bit after 20-25 minutes of sleep, they re-start their sleep cycle, thus allowing for a nap that is longer than 45 minutes.)
* Sometimes Lucy is alert and happy after 45 minutes of sleep. Sometimes she is crabby and sleepy. We need to gather more data to know when 45 minutes is adequate and when it is not.
* Lucy really does desire a nap after being awake for two hours. (In the swing days, I would keep her up for two and a half hours or more.)
* Lucy seems to enjoy three naps a day (not two, as I believed in the swing days).
As you can see, we are still considering several questions:
* How can I help Lucy to extend her naps consistently past 45 minutes?
* How can I help Lucy go back to sleep when she wakes, not hungry, during the night?
* What is a reasonable nap pattern for Lucy?
* Should we consider letting Lucy “cry it out†at some point?
* Do we need black-out curtains for Lucy’s room?
* Is it possible to get an awake, chatty baby to sleep again?
I keep reminding myself that this is just an experiment. It won’t always be so work-intensive to help my baby sleep during the day and night. Things will probably get easier, and then new challenges will come: starting solid food, teething, perhaps a cold here and there. Parenthood certainly keeps us on our toes!
Overall, Lucy seems quite happy with the new regime. And, if nothing else, at least I’ve been keeping my mind off the fact that Jon is out of town!
Well when you figure it out let me know! My big problem is I don’t remember going and getting Maddy in the night. All I know is I wake up at 7am with Maddy in our bed and half the time my boob is hanging out (I guess I fed her). HUM.
The other issue is that I have to weigh sleep or habits. Quite frankly I am liking my sleep and if puting the girl on the good ol’ boob in my bed means sleep, then ok. However, I really would like a night with my own bed back. So please let me know the details of how you do it, when you do it.
Katrina, that is so funny that you don’t remember getting Maddy in the night! It sounds like that is working awesome for you. I like your system. I’ve never really gotten the hang of nursing in bed, so I sit up to feed Lucy. It’s not the end of the world, but I’d love to sleep through if I can, especially because sometimes I have a hard time falling back asleep after I put her down! I’ll let you know how it goes!
Side nursing didn’t start to work for me until Maddy Got bigger, so keep trying every now and then and before you know it the two of you will make it work and you will never want to go back (it is great). The only problem with our system is Maddy is HUGE, yesterday I went to the doctor (Birth control time!!) and she weighed maddy for fun….23 lbs, okay my sister’s 20 month old weights 24 lbs. Then Brian pointed out that Maddy weights 1/4 as much as I do. So I feel like a bad mom because I have a chucker and I envision her as the big blueberry in WW and the Choc. Factory!!. But hopfully she will start burning the fat as she gets more moble.
Babies have 45 minute sleep cycles – hence Lucy’s tendency toward a 45 minute nap. You could try giving her a comfort object in the crib with her to see if that will help extend her nap. I had a friend that would go in a few minutes before the 45 minutes point and pat her baby to help him make the transition from one cycle to the next. We never did this with Benjamin because if he ever saw us he was up (also the reason we eventually let him cry it out – going in only delayed him going back to sleep, incidentally, when we did finally let him cry it out, he only cried for 15 minutes or so). One thing that worked really well with Benjamin which we started when he was about 14 weeks old, was wrapping him really well in a blanket, with his arms tucked in – he had been waking himself up by hitting himself in the face. I would lay him on the blanket, pull one corner over his right arm and tuck it under his body (between his left arm and torso) and then literally roll him up in it (like a burrito!). This prevented him from squirming out of it. He probably took naps in this fashion until he was at least 6 months old.
Benjamin was 3 naps a day for quite a while, although his 3rd nap would frequently only be 45 minutes, which was fine since his other naps were longer.
I also get super motivated to step up my parenting and try crazy new things when Daddy is gone. What IS that?
What fun! Getting the baby to sleep 8 hours…Does this work? No? How about this? Or this?
Or you can learn completely by accident like we did. Usually, we have our fan in our room turn off around 3am, and then I had the baby monitor up so I could hear Daniel cry. Well, one night, I had forgotten to turn on the monitor, and for some reason, the fan ran all night. So we never did hear Daniel wake up at 4am. I was absolutely devastated. Daniel was sleepy all that day, and I was certain it was my fault, that he stayed awake since 4. I was determined that everything worked that night…
Except, that Daniel slept all the way through the night. At first, I thought something was seriously wrong…then I realized…wait…he’s supposed to do that…
Never had a problem since…except for the extremely rare occasion…
Once we finally took the plunge so to speak, and decided to let Benjamin cry for a bit in the middle of the night (we set the initial time limit at 30 minutes), it only took 2 nights for him to figure it out and start sleeping all night long. After that I was like, “why didn’t we try that sooner?”
regarding nursing in bed, i didn’t figure it out until cadence was at least a few months old. once i got that down, though, it was much easier getting my 8 hours of sleep! even now, i still feed cadence a couple times during the night. she’s so skinny (less than 25lbs) that i feel like i have to, so i’m glad i’m able to do that lying down and asleep for the most part. we bought a full-sized bed that we pushed up against our queen sized so that all 3 of us can sleep in the same room with plenty of space, and that seems to be working well for us.
also, i think the napping time increased to 1.5-2+ hours at a time after cadence started walking, probably because she was wearing herself out from all the new physical activity.
there’s also some good info on the sears site:
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/t070200.asp
i like our cosleeping arrangement because a) i get to sleep through the night; b) we get bonding time during the night since i work outside the home during the day; c) i can easily monitor cadence’s condition if she’s sick (like the time she suddenly developed a high fever in the middle of the night and i had to give her a bath at 3am — i probably wouldn’t have known if she were sleeping somewhere else); d) i can nurse and get her some more nutrition — esp handy when she’s sick or teething and wants to nurse more frequently; e) cadence sleeps longer and better; f) i get to sleep through the night.
i think every baby sleeps differently depending on their temperament, so doing research like you’re doing is good for finding what does and doesn’t work for you and lucy. good luck!
Too funny, that Mo has been sleeping a little too well. I have to feed him between 4:30 and 5:30 or I don’t have enough time to get ready to go to work. So if he doesn’t wake up by 5 a.m. I go in and grab him, bring him to bed with me so he can eat while I get the last little bit of sleep. He’s usually quite happy to wake up to mom’s boobie in his face, and starts eating before doing a little “dream eating”.
An awake talking baby usually doesn’t go back to sleep right away. Either leave baby awake and talking alone while you sleep, or if it’s nap time while you do other things, or buck up and get up! Mo is good at forcing me to do the latter. He actually started smacking me in the face until I woke up and took him upstairs, and of course the minute I get out of bed Saturday morning Kaia is ready to get up and play too. (no other day of the week does this happen, just my only day to sleep in a little)
I think I heard/read somewhere that babies really aren’t able to sleep through the night or go without nighttime feedings until they are a certain weight or a certain age. Have you heard about the specifics of this? It’s possible that I’m making this up to feel better about my own baby’s night waking issues. Well, Josi is 6 months old and just started to extend her afternoon nap past 45 minutes without my help to get her back down. Previously, she would wake up and I was usually able to walk her back to sleep for a total of a 2-hour nap. But just this week she started to sleep through the 45-min intruder. I hope it sticks! And I hope you’re having some luck with Lucy. And if not, you may have more success in a month or two, or three… It’s a good thing babies are so cute, because they sure are difficult. You know, I heard on the radio that some countries and their militaries have ‘sleep deprivation/ interruption’ on their list of acceptable forms of torture.
We are still struggling with the new “seperation anxiety” sleeping thing here… I simply CAN’T bring Gabe to bed with us to solve this… Ben and I hardly get couple time as it is… but the 1 a.m. – 2 a.m. waking is a killer on us all. There are no easy answers, but I am glad ot know that others are seeking solutions too… And when November rolls around and Malcolm throw his $.02 in… well, I’ll be in the loony bin probably.
Keri – I have also heard that there is a weight and age factor into the whole sleeping through the night thing.
I hunted through my book, but couldn’t find the answer in my quick search. I want to say the weight is like 12 or 13 lbs. As for age – that varies by baby – it’s more a maturity thing. According to my book, around 4 months of age, infants start to have sleep cycles that are more similar to an adult’s sleep cycles. At this point their bodies also start to produce melatonin (a hormone that induces sleep) and this is when night sleep can be expected to lengthen and become more regular. Of course, this is also the age where they are getting much more social and are more likely to want to be up simply for social interation even when they need to be sleeping (all according to my book “Healthy Sleep habits, Happy Child” by Marc Weissbluth).
Well, things are going pretty well over here. Lucy is sleeping WAY longer at night, and I’ve been realizing that I had been going in too soon when she was just crying to settle herself down (what the Baby Whisperer books call the “mantra cry”). Still trying to figure out the 45 minute nap thing (plus, sometimes she wakes after 45 minutes of sleeping at bedtime). I keep reminding myself that we’ve been at this for less than a week! Good progress, still some challenges, that’s probably going to be the report for the next 18 years, right?
Also, Nicole, I’m so glad you once wrote about the nighttime 10:30 feed that you did with Benjamin. I’d read about it but never knew anyone who tried it. It’s been going really well over here, and I think that is a big reason Lucy has been able to sleep until 6 am the past couple of days!
Well Ann – you can thank my mother for that – I was hesitant to try it with Benjamin too, but she convinced me and it worked great!