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.) <\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
* Lucy is totally capable of sleeping through the night without a feeding.
\n* Lucy seems to be crying not from hunger, but because it is hard to fall asleep again.
\n* 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!
\n* When Lucy doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t poop all day long, she is extra-hard to soothe to sleep in the middle of the night (see above).
\n* Lucy has adapted easily to taking a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dream feed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned quite a bit on this front too:<\/p>\n
* Lucy has been falling asleep very easily and quickly in the crib! Much quicker than in the swing — often only 3-5 minutes.
\n* Lucy continues to wake up after 45 minutes of sleep (whereas I think she would enjoy at least a 90 minute nap).
\n* The Baby-Whisperer-recommended technique of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wake-to-sleep\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.)
\n* 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.
\n* 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.)
\n* Lucy seems to enjoy three naps a day (not two, as I believed in the swing days). <\/p>\n
As you can see, we are still considering several questions:
\n* How can I help Lucy to extend her naps consistently past 45 minutes?
\n* How can I help Lucy go back to sleep when she wakes, not hungry, during the night?
\n* What is a reasonable nap pattern for Lucy?
\n* Should we consider letting Lucy \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cry it out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at some point?
\n* Do we need black-out curtains for Lucy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room?
\n* Is it possible to get an awake, chatty baby to sleep again?<\/p>\n
I keep reminding myself that this is just an experiment. It won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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!<\/p>\n
Overall, Lucy seems quite happy with the new regime. And, if nothing else, at least I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been keeping my mind off the fact that Jon is out of town!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}