Sleeping Update 1

So last night we put him to bed around 8:15pm. He fell asleep while nursing, so there was no crying. He woke up at 11:00pm and cried for a couple of minutes. Then he didn't wake up until 4:30am! At that time, I went and reswaddled him and patted his butt until he fell asleep. (Since it was his first night without eating, I wanted to give him a little extra comfort.) He woke up again at 6:25am, and I fed him then. Then I put him back down and we woke up again at 8am.

Yea! I'm pleased with this progress, and really amazed that he actually does need to just cry for a few minutes. It was never terribly hard to get him to go to sleep. But I think that us bouncing him until his eyes were drooping was only helping him fall asleep, even if he was technically still awake when we laid him down. And I think that's why he woke up so often during the night--he just didn't know how to make himself go back to sleep. So that's what we're trying to remedy.

He's taking his second nap of the day now. He's cried for about 10 minutes each time before falling asleep.

Experimenting with Sleeping

I'm getting tired of not sleeping. Yesterday, after having gotten up four times the night before, I spent the day at the church office doing stuff to prepare for the Christmas Tea. By 3pm I had a painful headache and was not looking forward to metroing home. Thankfully, my awesome husband came to pick me up at 5:30pm, bring his computer so that he could finish his work from home.

After reading in several places that babies over four-months old and of healthy weight don't really need to eat during the night and that continuing to feed them is just beginning a bad habit, I decided that it's time for me to get more sleep. But I have been very fickle about applying parenting strategies in the past, so I ask Rich to just decide what we should do and then help me implement it.

He decided that we will stop feeding him at night and that Luke will have an 8pm bedtime. Also, we're going to let him cry himself to sleep. We'll go in at regular intervals, but only to comfort by talking to him or patting him. No picking him up and bouncing for 10-20 minutes!!

It went okay for our first night! We had put him down to sleep the old way at 7:30pm. He slept for an hour, during which we agreed on the new method. Then at 8:30pm, he woke up. We told him to go back to sleep and started the new method. According to Rich, he cried for 50 minutes. (I had fallen asleep by the end of it.) He woke up again around 11:30pm, but went back to sleep. Then at 12:20am, he woke up and I fed him. Another wake up at 3:30am. I went and reswaddled him and gave him the paci--without picking him up. He fussed a bit, but went back to sleep. Then around 6am, he was generally fussy, in and out of sleep until 7am, when I got him out and fed him. We got up after that.

Today I've been putting him down awake for his naps. He's cried about 15 minutes each time. Thankfully, he doesn't have a terribly bad/sad cry. It sounds more like frustration and crankiness. Much different than his distress cry.

And! I just happened to flip to "The Tyra Show" today, and she had moms on who were talking about their problems with babies! She had on this lady who wrote the book The Sleep-Easy Solution, or something like that. The lady said that in their medical practice, to encourage sleeping, they use the acronym BEDS. Bedtime routine, environment, down awake and schedule. I think that's a great happy medium of all the theories. OK, maybe except for Attachment Parenting, but whatever.

So we'll see how this goes! I get so excited when I think about sleeping 8 hours in a row again...