This is a post for moms and dads. HELP, PLEASE!
I am writing about sleep. Baby sleep.
When Wesley was born, we had to wake up every 2 hours to feed him so he'd gain weight. After that, he would wake up every 2 or 3 hours on his own to eat. All fine and good, since he was a tiny baby!
Eventually, it morphed into 4, 5, 6, or 7 hours of continuous sleep at night. The heavens shone down on us! I was such a happy mama, and the envy of all my friends!
Then something happened. I think it started in August-ish when it got sososososo hot. Really hot. He would wake up every 3 hours again. Ergh! I attributed it to the heat, fed him, consoled him, put him back down, no problem.
But it kept going.
OK, so perhaps it's a growth spurt. I have other friends who said, "oh yeah, my baby did the same thing at 3 months and in 2 weeks we were back to 5 hours at night."
But it's been much more than 2 weeks for me. And this is still going on.
Why won't the boy sleep? Last night I was up every hour from 3 until 8, either feeding him or reswaddling him and begging him to go back to sleep or listening to him cry or crying myself. It was awful.
At one point, a couple weeks ago, we tried the "let him soothe himself to sleep" thing, where he cried some and and we comforted him some but left the room while he was still awake. It worked OK for a few days, but then we kinda let it go since we have to be in the mood for the "give and take" that generally ensues. But lately, we haven't even had a chance to try it, because when the boy gets fussy around 7 or 7:30 pm, I just feed him and he immediately conks out. (Which I understand poses a problem itself, his dependency to "nurse to sleep." So there are more issues for me.)
So what do I do? I have Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, but finding time to actually read it is impossible. When Wesley's asleep, I want to be asleep. I am utterly exhausted. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture -- waking someone up just as they get to that REM cycle.
Plus, I read one chapter or so of the book and tried to implement it. The author said if the baby is tired, put him to sleep no matter how early it is and you'll be surprised that he'll sleep through until this normal awake time and no earlier. Since common sense would say if I usually put him to bed at 8 pm, and every day we wake up at 8 am, if I shifted the bedtime up an hour, the awake time would shift as well. The book argues otherwise.
So one day, we put Wesley to bed at 6:45 pm since he was in rare form. But it didn't work, and he was roaring to go at 7 am the next morning, a Sunday. I was so upset I cried.
Some other things to consider:
- I've been pretty proud of myself for establishing 8 am as our "awake time." If he wakes up prior to 8 am, I'll go in there and reswaddle him and calm him down and tell him it's not time to get up for the day. I'll put him down and go back to sleep myself, and usually he is OK with that! It's been a total high point in my baby-training life.
- We have a really good bedtime routine I've been doing for a couple months now. We change him into PJs, read a couple books (many are "bedtime"-oriented books), then I nurse him with only the nightlight on and some jazz music playing, then I swaddle him and we say a prayer, and I lay him down to sleep. Usually, he's asleep by that time, but sometimes he's not.
- Yesterday it dawned on me that maybe I wasn't feeding him enough during the day so he needed more nutrients at night. Every time he got a bit fussy during the day I fed him. He must have fed 10 times, usually once every 1.5 hours. That's much more than I fed him previously. But, as you can see, he was still up 1,500 times during the night so it didn't work.
- He takes naps during the day. Yesterday he took three 40-45-minute naps, which I thought was an absolute victory. He sometimes takes 2- and 3-hour naps, but it's not consistent.
- Sometimes even though he's ridiculously tired he fights the naps, in those cases I generally do 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off... which means for 10 minutes I console him while he's inconsolable, then I take a break for 10 minutes and see if he can console himself. It generally goes on for 40 minutes before he finally goes to sleep. We've done the 10/10 idea at night, too, but usually at night he is better about going to sleep (perhaps because it's dark out?).
- He hasn't pooed for a couple days. I partly think he's working on one, and maybe that's agitating?
- The nurse from the pediatrician's office says that it isn't too early for teething. He is only 3.5 months! I'd die if he was teething.
Please help.
8 comments:
Ah Angela...yes...sleep. The hardest part of motherhood I think. I am a believer in the book you mentioned though, but I have a love-hate relationship with it (if you look back on my blog about last November-ish, I had a ranting post about it). It took us until 8 months before Nathan slept from 7pm to 7am, FYI. From about 5 months to 8 months he stil woke up at 4am for a feeding. At 3 months we started the regiment of putting him to bed at 7pm, no matter what. He would usually wake up at about 11pm, then 3am then sleep until 7am. Then at 5 months we eliminated that 11ish feeding, then he eliminated the 3am one on his own. I am so envious of these people who talk about their kids sleeping through the night at 2 months - who are you people??? Anyway, the ticket, my exhausted friend, is CONSISTENCY. You have to be super super consistent and somewhat heartless it will feel like. Establish a routine and stick to it at all cost. Also at night, only take him out of the crib to feed or diaper change (or if he doesn't poop at night, get overnight diapers and don't change the diaper if he can stand it - Nathan HATED having his diaper changed at night and never pooped). Put him to bed drowsy and calm but awake. Use a pacifier if he uses one. Oh, and he may be getting a little big for swaddling, the next step I'd recommend is a sleep sack (godsend for mothers of snuggly babies) - worth every penny of the $20. The other thing that book emphasizes with the little ones is that they shouldnt' be awake for more than 2 hours at a time because they get over-tired and then they can't go to sleep, and then you've got a fussy little guy.
I have struggled with naps and Nathan his whole life. We are currently in the 2-1 nap transition at 13.5 months (earlier than I would have liked) and it is getting better, but it's still tough sometimes.
Oh - and it's okay to be tired and to be "lazy" and to sleep all day. It gets better - I promise - and then you'll be the old pro who can give advice to others. :) Hang in there.
(sorry for writing a book)
Well, you have the book that I would recommend (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child). I came to it when Emily Lara was a little older so I don't have any real life experience with the young baby advice...but we really did find that putting her to bed earlier got her sleeping later. Maybe not every time we did it, but overall.
One thing that helped Emily Lara to sleep when she was a baby was having a musical mobile. That was what helped us to transition from putting her down asleep to putting her down tired & content but awake. It really helped her learn how to fall asleep herself and that helped with the middle of the night wakings. The mobile we used had about 15 minutes worth of classical music and then it switched off.
I'm enormously empathetic on the sleep deprivation thing. Hang in there. It does get better! Make sure you are getting sleep during the day as much as possible (so you don't end up jumping off a cliff one of these nights). If you have a choice between taking a nap and doing anything else (even eating), I would choose the nap. Even 10 minutes will help. Also, remember that lying down is restful even if you can't actually sleep. When I am really tired but can't sleep I'll lay down and read books to Emily Lara etc. Take advantage of rest whenever you can get it (get a stool to sit on when you work in the kitchen!). Sleep deprivation is the #1 health problem of new moms, IMO.
As you can see, we moms of older kids have had years to ponder this subject and could write volumes on it!!! :-) Wish we all could have night nannies....
The book I would recommend is by the AAP. You can find it here. It's written as a reference guide, so you don't have to read the entire thing.
Wesley is still very young and is likely still finding his groove. This may work itself out in another couple of weeks. I really wouldn't worry too much about it.
I don't want to be a downer but I struggle with this all the time. Bedtime is so tough in our house especially with a 3 year old who pretty much has given up naps but if he ever is overly tired and needs one then is super restless at night and takes FOREVER to fall asleep. Jonah on the other hand will still wake up in the middle of the night and I'm just too much of a sucker to not let him just nurse back to sleep. No I haven't weaned the boy 100% yet, but we are working on that one. I've read through Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child and it just made me feel bad and like I was doing everything wrong. So I guess I just go with the flow and try to keep things consistent but not be too harsh about it either. 3 1/2 month's isn't too early for teething but I think too many people blame things on teething when it's really not the case. You'll know when he's teething though since he's gum will be swollen and irritated. I think their wakefulness is mostly due to their brain development, nightmares/dreams and the fact that if they use you as a sleep-aide and something does wake them up they don't know how to self-soothe. So try to figure out other ways he can soothe himself, but don't ditch the nursing since it's super important and he needs it. Just be thankful that you aren't working right now so you can take a nap or two during the day with the little guy. I hope I've been helpful. Ooops, gotta go, guess who just woke up?! DARN!
thanks guys, i need all the help i can get. things are gradually improving. some days we win, some days we lose. work in progress, no?
I think Danielle had it right when she talked about consistency. Little children need routines and they need to stick to them. Vacations are the hardest with Kyler because we get out of the groove and his sleeping schedule just gets all wacked up. I think it is great that you have a 8 a.m. wake time, but it never really worked that way with us. When we finally got Kyler sleeping through the night, he usually was getting up at 7 a.m. Many of the examples in the book talk about the kids getting up at 6:45, 6:30 or so. Be glad though that Wes is starting a routine, we just kind of 'lived with it' for Kyler's first year- he never slept through the night. Melani discovered the book so many people have mentioned soon after we got back from our Christmas vacation in California, and it wasn't until he was 14 or 15 months we got him on a sleep schedule with naps and sleeping through the night. Glad to hear you're using the baby carrier. :)
Dude - you know I'm with you on this. I guess I'm in the minority and I read Dr. Sears' book for sleeping (The Baby Sleep Book, I think?)... it helped a bit, but basically said that you have to hang in there, that it's totally natural for babies to wake in the night (esp breastfed babies), and to do whatever you can to take care of yourself because YOU need to be healthy to take care of the munchkin.
Dr. Karp's Happiest Baby on the Block is one of my FAVORITE books, and he suggests swaddling up through 3 months - though he says that some kids continue to swaddle past that, as in Alice's case. I'd suggest the swaddle me. It's FANTASTIC.
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