Second-guessing

It was much easier to make decisions about how to care for an infant when I was reading books with the baby still in my belly. Now I see that the decisions we make actually have *consequences*, and it is pretty easy to worry if we are doing the right thing.

Lucy speaks outAfter much reading and consideration, Jon and I decided to go with the “flexible routine” philosophy found in “_Secrets of the Baby Whisperer_”:/news/2006/secrets-of-the-baby-whisperer-by-tracy-hogg/. So far it has been going really well: we try to feed Lucy every 2.5 to 3 hours, then change her diaper and give her a bit of awake time, and then she usually falls asleep. She appears to be quite content. She rarely seems to be crying from hunger, and most of the other times that she is crying we can figure it out.

The hardest part is waking her up to eat, and trying to keep her awake through a meal. Every baby book says that newborns can be pretty sleepy but that it’s good to wake them so they’ll get the nourishment they need. But I sometimes can’t help but feel like we are doing sleep torture on her. But of course my fears are not based in reality, as a) she doesn’t cry when we wake her up, and b) she always seems glad to eat. Even so, today during a nursing session I kept imagining her feeling irritated with me when she is a teenager because I never let her sleep enough. (I have always had an active imagination.)

The great thing about the routine is that she seems to be getting used to sleeping for a longer stretch at night. She slept for four hours straight for the past two nights, and Jon and I have been ecstatic to get those hours of sleep in one chunk. I don’t think either of us ever would have imagined how happy we would be to sleep for a four-hour stretch.

Here is the truth: we are rookies, and we can only do our best. Probably, in ten years there will be a new study about how you should never wake a baby and we’ll have to shake our heads at our ignorance. But in the meantime, Lucy is just going to have to be okay with two parents who love her like crazy and who happen to “benefit from structure”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0115734/.

16 Replies to “Second-guessing”

  1. Hi Ann – I can definitely relate to your feelings on this one! We did the same thing with Benjamin, but it really worked out well – by 6 weeks old he would do a 6 hour chunk at night and by 8 weeks he started going 8 hours. He was so sleepy when eating that I would always change him after he nursed one side to wake him back up. We also would put a cold, wet, washcloth on his face to try and keep him up for the task at hand! Hard to believe now that he was ever that sleepy!

  2. Ann,

    We followed the same routine with Charis. She, too, was a sleepy baby and it was very hard to keep her awake to nurse. We even tried using a cold washcloth to keep her awake! Sounds so harsh but that’s the advice we were given by many nurses and doctors. By the time Charis was 8 weeks old she was sleeping 6-7 hours overnight. The routine you are following seems to work very well and it keeps you sane. It sounds like you “rookies” are doing just fine. :)

  3. I forgot to mention too that by the time Benjamin was 2 or 3 weeks old, he had gotten into the routine so I didn’t have to wake him up anymore – he got up on his own to eat.

  4. Nicole and Kathrin, thanks for the feedback! I love hearing real-life stories of ways that these theories I’ve read about actually work. Wow, 6-7 hours overnight sounds awesome! My question of the day is: “how can we help Lucy go to sleep?” When she is finally asleep she sleeps well (and I have to wake her up to eat), but the 3-hour cycle doesn’t always seem fair to her if she spends a lot of her naptime wrestling against falling asleep. Today we are trying a white noise machine — so far it seems helpful. Any other tips?

  5. Benjamin loved bouncing (he hated rocking). By bouncing, I mean that we would hold him in a cradle hold and bounce up and down – to make it easier you can use a pilates ball or sit on the edge of a bed. Anyway – that’s always been his preferred method of being put to sleep (that and nursing). When he got a bit older (like 6 weeks), I started letting him try to put himself to sleep by letting him cry for a few minutes and then checking on him and then giving him a few more minutes. I think with this next baby, I’ll actually start that routine even sooner. I really liked the book “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” by Dr. Weissbluth. He gives lots of suggestions for soothing to sleep and also offers a lot of insight into how much sleep babies need at different stages of their lives, different techniques for helping them learn to put themselves to sleep, etc. I really liked that he didn’t advocate any particular strategy (such as crying it out vs. no crying or crib only vs. family bed), instead his philosophy is you have to do what works for your family and gives examples of several different techniques.

    Another thing that made a big difference with Benjamin is paying attention to how long he had been awake – as a newborn, their longest awake time should be no longer than 2 hours, often much less than that. If you go past that, they get overtired and then it’s very difficult to get them to sleep – we had a lot of problems with that with Benjamin in the first few weeks, until I reread the book and realized we’d been letting him be awake too long! Anyway – the book recommends, and it worked for us, starting to soothe them back to sleep after they’ve been awake for about an hour. You don’t actually have to put them to sleep, just soothe them to a sleepy state and then put them in their bed if you want to do it that way or rock them all the way to sleep if that’s your preferred strategy.

  6. Just wanted to second Nicole’s comment about Weissbluth’s book. I really appreciated the different stories of how people helped their kids develop sleep routines. And the 2 hour thing made a big difference for Evan. After he’d been up for a while, Evan would get all wired and excited, and we’d think, wow, what a crazy baby. Eventually we realized he was just exhausted. :( Poor boy. When we put him down sooner, he developed a daytime routine of about 1 hour happy, less than an hour tired/fussy, then asleep.

    Sounds like you’re doing great thus far. And I love that picture – very funny. :)

  7. I think I must be really lucky, Maddy has always just put herself to sleep. However we have yet to get her to sleep more than 5 hours at night. The Doctor told us today that we can let her sooth herself at night (she never cries, just makes a lot of sucking noises). There have only been two times that she wouldn’t go to sleep and so I put her in the stroller and walked up and down the hallways (we have really long ones out side the apt). I read about giving your baby clear signs that it is nap/bed time. For example a bath and changing her cloths will let her know it is time for bed. I sing and read a book at nap times. Now that she is older I just tell her it is nap time, put her in the crib and leave the room. That won’t work for you quite yet, but soon. It is really good for both of you to take walks, this will help her not get bored. All this said, I quess it all is up to Lucy.
    By the way Brian says hello and wants to visit, I told him to give you some space yet. But we will contact you soon as we move in 38 days. You remain in our prayers (let us know if you have specific prayers).
    -katrina

  8. This is all great stuff. I have that Weissbluth book but I haven’t finished reading it — I got kind of bogged down in his sleep theory stuff near the beginnining. But I’m going to get it out now! The one hour of awake time makes a lot of sense, as that is just about as long as Lucy can stay awake without being grumpy about it.

    So, what do you do when the routine is interrupted for some reason? e.g. we have a doctor’s appt tomorrow, and I don’t think we’ll be able to time it so that we arrive, nurse, and have the appt all in one hour. :) I really appreciate having a schedule as it gives us some predictability, but I’m wondering what life is going to be like when I actually want to leave the house again. (All I’ve really done so far is sit on our front step with Lucy for about 10 min at a time.)

    Katrina, you are so funny counting the days until you move! Do you have any idea where yet? We’d love to see you. Say hello to Brian back for us. Thanks for praying for us — mainly Jon and I just want to do a good job as parents and we want Lucy to know that we love her and God loves her. That is our prayer.

  9. Oh, and Deborah I’m glad you liked the picture! Jon always finds these awesome ones, and I never know what will go up with the post. This one cracked me up. :)

  10. Hi Ann – with the book, I would recommend looking at the table of contents, finding your baby’s age and reading that part – otherwise it can get a bit overwhelming.

    As for the routine interruptions – not much you can do about that! You can always hope that she’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home or wait to nurse her until you can put her down for a nap and hope the sleep inducing hind-milk does the trick. Sometimes the overtired state happens, what I decided is that it’s okay when it happens and in those cases I would have to rock Benjamin to sleep. When I was really working to get him to put himself to sleep I would sometimes think I had “failed” if I had to rock him down, but then I decided that 1) I would later miss that time, so I might as well enjoy it and 2) he doesn’t have to always put himself to sleep to learn the basic principle and 3) what really matters in the end is that he sleeps, not how he goes to sleep.

    You should also realize that as Lucy gets older, she will develop more of a schedule and have longer periods of awake time. By about 12 weeks of age, Benjamin had pretty much settled into a 3 nap a day schedule with one feeding at night (not bad considering “night” was about 12 hours). I can remember when Benjamin was that little though, that I didn’t want to go anywhere with him – what if he needed to eat? what if he needed to sleep? what if he screamed the whole time? As I adjusted to life as a mom (and once I became more comfortable with nursing) I became less concerned about these things and realized that sometimes you just have to go with it.

  11. I cannot tell you how many times I have pulled over to nurse! At first though I would pump and put a little in a bottle for her, just in case I couldn’t get the nursing to work in public or if I couldn’t pull over….and it didn’t mess up the nursing because we only gave her the bottle if I really had too. Because of our crazy schedule we have had maddy in child care since she was 2 weeks old (although I went down to nurse her every two hours at first) I have never worried about a schedule. Some write down every time the baby sleeps, eats, and poos, I just make a basic note in my head and go with the flow. Today at the doctor we discover Maddy is in the 95% for everything (15 pounds, 26.25 inches long and only 4 months). So don’t be afraid to go out and try life as a mom, just know that it might be a little crazy and others might see your boob (but my experience is most people will turn away).

    We won’t have any clue where we will move until June 11 when we are told on stage in front of 3000 people. I can’t wait, it is so exciting!!

    You guys are doing great! sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!

  12. Hi Ann. My 2 cents is 1) Like someone said before me, Lucy will stretch her awake/sleep periods out… when that happens is when you get a little freedom back – for now look at her challenging schedule as nature’s way of making sure YOU take it easy. 2) Once you begin going out you will likely plan those outings around her schedule – plan to bolt out of the house as soon as she wakes up and is fed and then plan to be back within 2 hours and she needs to settle in for her next nap. Tha parents I see who seem to have the toughest time are the ones who forget that baby’s schedule does need to come first for quite some time. Inconvenient? Yes. Annoying at times? Sure. Necessary for a healthy, happy family? I strongly believe so.
    Having said all that – it sure sounds like you guys are doing well.

  13. Hey Ann
    Ok, so THAT is the best picture ever! Except for all those other best pics on the site of your daughter : P
    You are doing great…keep it up…you’ll get the rhythm of it in a few weeks I promise. I did the no routine thing with Riley (who STILL doesn’t sleep well!) and a big structured thing with Chet, who sleeps like crazy and a modified version of babywise with the other two (wayyyy modified) and they go to sleep very well on their own.
    The best piece of advice…don’t PUSH any big time schedule on the baby this young. Try to work within a framework rather than a rigid schedule. It sounds like you are feeling that out already so I think you’ll do great.
    Also, if she doesn’t want to go to sleep when you put her down you can do some weissbluth stuff and the good suggestions already posted. “crying it out” is not an option at this tender age…and if you lay good groundwork you’ll probably never have to suffer that particular horror…it is no dang fun.
    Remember ONE very important thing…your house is GOD centered…not ann centered, not jon centered, not lucy centered…the baby will consume much of your life now AND look for God in it! it’s an awesome thing.
    You guys are blessed and a blessing!
    ang

  14. You guys are so helpful! it is especially wonderful to know that other people have gone through what we are going through right now. We keep asking, “will this work?” or “are we doing it right?” Jon and I are trying to give ourselves grace and remember that we are getting to know Lucy, and she is getting to know us. It is a lot less about our being “successful” parents and much more about getting to know Lucy’s rhythms, personality, and preferences.

    Ang, thanks for the reminder about the God-centered house. It is hard sometimes to remember to look for him, but I know he is in this with us! and Lucy reminds us of that whenever we start to really forget.

    You are all awesome friends! thank you so much for your thoughtful responses and helpful ideas.

  15. As a sleep-deprived mom of twins, one of whom still wakes to nurse 2-3x a night at age two, and the other of whom wakes at 5:30 or 6 am, hungry (though thankfully he’ll eat Cheerios instead alongside the two big kids, without much grumbling)…

    …my thought is that we as parents will do everything wrong for our kids at least once. And that God’s grace extends to us as parents just like it does to us as his children.

    When pregnant with my oldest I made the mistake of reading widely – everything from “Growing Kids God’s Way” and “To Train up a Child” (training and molding your child as a means of showing love) all the way to the Sears’ “Attachment Parenting” (loving your child as the primary way of training and molding your child.)

    This meant that every, EVERY decision I made was wrong by at least one authority. And still is. And as it turns out, my children are just as sinful and fallen as I am. Go figure.

    You will develop your own parenting style. You will probably always wonder whether each decision is or was the right one. You will do things you regret. But the decisions aren’t set in stone, either. You can try something and see if it works, and not worry about it if it doesn’t.

    I let my eldest son “cry it out” for bedtime and naptimes at the age of about 8 months… and after three brokenhearted days I decided I couldn’t do it to him, and went back to nursing him to sleep. He was much readier to go to sleep on his own at about 5 years… though I find myself still wondering if it was the right choice. I wonder both directions: maybe I should have been more “attachment parenting” at age five, maybe I should have been tougher at age one, maybe maybe maybe.

    It’s good to know that God will use my failings to bring about His will for my children, just as much as he uses the few things I manage to do right. And I might even be confused about which are the ‘right’, which are the ‘wrong’ and which are the ‘makes no difference.’

    But His will will still be done, hallelujah! He will bring his purposes about in me and in my children. And probably the best thing I can do is to keep begging, like the persistent widow, that He will draw my children into His kingdom.

    praying for grace and peace and sleep for you three :o)

  16. What a fabulous photo! I hope you guys are saving all of this commentary to disc… It’s exactly the kind of thing that Lucie will love to read (gulp!) 30 years from now :-) Much love to the three of you!
    -Kerida

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