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Thinking about sleep
This is so boring, but it's my obsession of late, so I'm trying to write it out and make a serious plan to make it better.
Last week I read the American Academy of Pediatrics' book Your Child's Sleep (or somesuch title - I keep forgetting it.) Felt horrible and as if I'd been doing everything wrong. They don't recommend sleeping with a baby on safety grounds, so I had that strike against me from the start. They strongly recommend "teaching the baby to fall asleep" from the age of three months. Which, you know, very sensible, to teach the baby to fall asleep by herself, but they never exactly explained HOW one teaches a baby to go to sleep. I mean, I know how to teach a cat not to climb a ficus tree - using a squirt gun - so I do have some experience teaching pre-rational creatures things, but I don't think the squirt gun approach was going to work here. And simply putting the baby down when sleepy but not asleep, which is the most explicit the "teach" directions get, has, when tried, resulted in lots of crying. In fact, the whole reason the baby sleeps in our bed was her inability to fall asleep (at the age of 2 months) except in our arms.
As as aside, which may show how much pediatricians know about children, my own father, who is a family physician and the parent of 5, when asked "Casper is 6 weeks old and won't sleep except while being held. What can we do?" replied "Does she have a favorite toy you can put in her bed with her?" Huh? At six weeks, a baby isn't aware that her own hands are part of her body - she's surprised when they pass by her face - how could she possibly have a favorite toy??
THIS week, The No Cry Sleep Solution, by a woman named Pantley, fell into my hands. A friend had offered to loan it 6 weeks ago, and only brought it by Monday. And maybe it's just the right time for me to hear the message, but it's like a godsend. I really feel ready to do something about getting more sleep. The book is not the greatest book ever written - it's kind of cutesy in tone, addressed specifically and exclusively to mothers (was there never a single father of a non-sleeping toddler?), and has a rah-rah cheedleaderyness that ordinarily I would find annoying, but in my desperate straits is actually, sigh, cheering. I can do it, I can do it!
This book is practical, and full of useful ideas, and describes, in step by step detail, how to teach a baby to fall asleep without nursing, or whatever your particular issue with sleep may be. Some of the good things we are already doing - we have a good bedtime routine, and Casper has little trouble falling asleep in the evenings. Some things we are working on already - her napping has gotten better - she was the queen of the 45 minute micronap, but has increasingly had 2-hour naps daily. I do need to make Mike and the nanny work together a little better, so her developing daytime routine coalesces into something consistent. And I want to encourage napping earlier in the day - often she'll resist napping until late afternoon, and I think it will help if we are proactive and encourage her to nap starting as early as 1 pm. The real problem is the night-time waking - not hers, actually, as she is mostly asleep, but mine.
The current situation: The Problem: Casper goes to bed around 8 pretty consistently, and falls asleep in about 20 minutes. She generally nurses right before bed, and does use a pacifier to settle down, but she is able to actually fall asleep without either of those aids, so she doesn't have a strong association between sucking and sleep. She nurses about every two hours now during the night - on a really bad night, it can be almost every hour; last night was a pretty good night, as she nursed at 10:30, 1:15, 3:30, and then not until after waking up for the day. She's not fully awake, but she definitely expects to nurse. She'll start by getting restless, wiggling, making little squawks, and escalate to quiet crying. I can postpone her for a while by putting in the pacifier - that's how I got her to go as late as 1:15 last night - she first woke at about 12:30 - but eventually she will really want to nurse. I generally feed her once she gets out one good cry. She nurses for 10 mintes or more, really drinking, and de-latches and goes quietly to sleep when she's had enough. I fall back asleep pretty quickly, but I am awake while she nurses, and the sleep disruption is causing my problems in being sufficiently rested. She also tends to be restless and wiggly (while still asleep) in bed after about 4 am; often after the feeding towards morning I go to the couch to sleep undisturbed (mr. flea's tendency to snore here does not help). I am a light sleeper towards morning, so am bothered more by wiggling I sleep through at 11 pm.
More later on ideas for the solution...
Last week I read the American Academy of Pediatrics' book Your Child's Sleep (or somesuch title - I keep forgetting it.) Felt horrible and as if I'd been doing everything wrong. They don't recommend sleeping with a baby on safety grounds, so I had that strike against me from the start. They strongly recommend "teaching the baby to fall asleep" from the age of three months. Which, you know, very sensible, to teach the baby to fall asleep by herself, but they never exactly explained HOW one teaches a baby to go to sleep. I mean, I know how to teach a cat not to climb a ficus tree - using a squirt gun - so I do have some experience teaching pre-rational creatures things, but I don't think the squirt gun approach was going to work here. And simply putting the baby down when sleepy but not asleep, which is the most explicit the "teach" directions get, has, when tried, resulted in lots of crying. In fact, the whole reason the baby sleeps in our bed was her inability to fall asleep (at the age of 2 months) except in our arms.
As as aside, which may show how much pediatricians know about children, my own father, who is a family physician and the parent of 5, when asked "Casper is 6 weeks old and won't sleep except while being held. What can we do?" replied "Does she have a favorite toy you can put in her bed with her?" Huh? At six weeks, a baby isn't aware that her own hands are part of her body - she's surprised when they pass by her face - how could she possibly have a favorite toy??
THIS week, The No Cry Sleep Solution, by a woman named Pantley, fell into my hands. A friend had offered to loan it 6 weeks ago, and only brought it by Monday. And maybe it's just the right time for me to hear the message, but it's like a godsend. I really feel ready to do something about getting more sleep. The book is not the greatest book ever written - it's kind of cutesy in tone, addressed specifically and exclusively to mothers (was there never a single father of a non-sleeping toddler?), and has a rah-rah cheedleaderyness that ordinarily I would find annoying, but in my desperate straits is actually, sigh, cheering. I can do it, I can do it!
This book is practical, and full of useful ideas, and describes, in step by step detail, how to teach a baby to fall asleep without nursing, or whatever your particular issue with sleep may be. Some of the good things we are already doing - we have a good bedtime routine, and Casper has little trouble falling asleep in the evenings. Some things we are working on already - her napping has gotten better - she was the queen of the 45 minute micronap, but has increasingly had 2-hour naps daily. I do need to make Mike and the nanny work together a little better, so her developing daytime routine coalesces into something consistent. And I want to encourage napping earlier in the day - often she'll resist napping until late afternoon, and I think it will help if we are proactive and encourage her to nap starting as early as 1 pm. The real problem is the night-time waking - not hers, actually, as she is mostly asleep, but mine.
The current situation: The Problem: Casper goes to bed around 8 pretty consistently, and falls asleep in about 20 minutes. She generally nurses right before bed, and does use a pacifier to settle down, but she is able to actually fall asleep without either of those aids, so she doesn't have a strong association between sucking and sleep. She nurses about every two hours now during the night - on a really bad night, it can be almost every hour; last night was a pretty good night, as she nursed at 10:30, 1:15, 3:30, and then not until after waking up for the day. She's not fully awake, but she definitely expects to nurse. She'll start by getting restless, wiggling, making little squawks, and escalate to quiet crying. I can postpone her for a while by putting in the pacifier - that's how I got her to go as late as 1:15 last night - she first woke at about 12:30 - but eventually she will really want to nurse. I generally feed her once she gets out one good cry. She nurses for 10 mintes or more, really drinking, and de-latches and goes quietly to sleep when she's had enough. I fall back asleep pretty quickly, but I am awake while she nurses, and the sleep disruption is causing my problems in being sufficiently rested. She also tends to be restless and wiggly (while still asleep) in bed after about 4 am; often after the feeding towards morning I go to the couch to sleep undisturbed (mr. flea's tendency to snore here does not help). I am a light sleeper towards morning, so am bothered more by wiggling I sleep through at 11 pm.
More later on ideas for the solution...
no subject
I remember getting earplugs for the early-morning snoring problem (my DH, too); making sure the room was dark and getting a white-noise machine (that helped with LB waking just at random house noise). For the nursing, I tried to do a prophylactic nurse right before *I* went to bed, so that I wouldn't fall asleep for an hour or two and get that horrible wakeup. I remember getting three or four hours at a time that way. Also, I would do a diaper change then if necessary.
I seem to think that this happened about every six weeks or so, we'd have a spate of bad nights around a growth spurt, and then it would get better for a while. Hang in there -- LB sleeps right through the night NOW.