A New Routine
While we were at the beach Sarah Graves had some nights that were just tough. She sleeps in her pack'n play fine, but there were some nights where she was up many times and sometimes she was just plain unhappy and nothing helped her go back to sleep except getting up and playing for a bit. This persisted our first night home and I knew it was time for me to do somethng different.
I pulled out my book on sleep and started reading on Sunday morning. When I first read the book, I put it down because they suggest that you let your baby cry it out. I read the section on her age and I actually picked up several things.
First, I am trying to get her to nurse too frequently. This book suggests that babies 5 - 8 months old only need to nurse about 4 or 5 times a day. As I mentioned before, I have been nursing 7 times a day. She isn't always super interested and tends to be easily distracted, which frustrates me some. She hasn't been wanting to nurse much during the day and then of course at night, she wants an open buffet. Not exactly the direction I was hoping we would be moving in.
I also read that at this age most babies have 3 naps a day, but they will give up the 3rd nap by 9 months old. Sarah Graves does a pretty good job with naps. The problems are that she sometimes wants to sleep late in the afternoon meaning she has to be woken up when it's time for her to come home and she gets a little cranky (can't say that I blame her; who wants to get up from a good nap), and sometimes her naps are very short and sometimes very long. Their recommendation is that you lay them down for a nap at the set time and leave them there to go to sleep on their own and let them cry for as long as an hour. At the end of the hour, if they haven't gone to sleep you go to them to comfort them and make the decision to pursue the nap or give up until the next time. That part is hard to think about, but I think they are right because sometimes she is very tired, has her eyes almost closed, and continues to fight the sleep until she cries for a few minutes and drops off.
Then, I got to the part where it recommends that you train your baby to sleep at night by not going to them and letting them cry. This is the part that I have such a hard time with. However, her nights of waking up crying and not wanting to go back to sleep with any amount of consoling have made me feel like we have to do something different because she is clearly unhappy and I am exhausted. There are stories from parents and most claim that their baby only cried for 20 minutes before going back to sleep. 20 minutes is a long time to lay there and want to comfort her, but it's also a long time to be up trying to comfort her and have no success. Most parents said that within a week their baby was sleeping through the night, so I found this encouraging.
So, I made a plan and Aaron agreed that it sounded worth trying. She gets up at 6 AM and nurses, she eats breakfast at 8, she is laid down for a nap at 9, she nurses when she wakes up, she eats lunch at 12, she is laid down for a nap at 1, she nurses when she wakes up, she can nap in the late afternoon if she needs it (sometimes on the car ride home), she has dinner around 6, and she has a bath and nurses before bed at 8.
We put our plan into action last night and took the book's advice and turned off the monitor knowing that I would wake up if she was really crying. I laid there not falling asleep, dreading listening to her cry during the night. I finally fell asleep after a while, but woke frequently to listen for her. Every time I woke up it was quiet. By 4:30 I couldn't take it and snuck in to check on her and she was fine. At 5:30 I heard her wake up and went in to her. She greeted me by putting her hands on my cheeks and giving me a big baby kiss. She then proceeded to nurse peacefully for the next 20 minutes!
She had a good day today and went to bed easily. I have been saying prayers all day that she will sleep tonight and that I will have the resolve I need to get us out of this cycle of waking up many times a night.
I pulled out my book on sleep and started reading on Sunday morning. When I first read the book, I put it down because they suggest that you let your baby cry it out. I read the section on her age and I actually picked up several things.
First, I am trying to get her to nurse too frequently. This book suggests that babies 5 - 8 months old only need to nurse about 4 or 5 times a day. As I mentioned before, I have been nursing 7 times a day. She isn't always super interested and tends to be easily distracted, which frustrates me some. She hasn't been wanting to nurse much during the day and then of course at night, she wants an open buffet. Not exactly the direction I was hoping we would be moving in.
I also read that at this age most babies have 3 naps a day, but they will give up the 3rd nap by 9 months old. Sarah Graves does a pretty good job with naps. The problems are that she sometimes wants to sleep late in the afternoon meaning she has to be woken up when it's time for her to come home and she gets a little cranky (can't say that I blame her; who wants to get up from a good nap), and sometimes her naps are very short and sometimes very long. Their recommendation is that you lay them down for a nap at the set time and leave them there to go to sleep on their own and let them cry for as long as an hour. At the end of the hour, if they haven't gone to sleep you go to them to comfort them and make the decision to pursue the nap or give up until the next time. That part is hard to think about, but I think they are right because sometimes she is very tired, has her eyes almost closed, and continues to fight the sleep until she cries for a few minutes and drops off.
Then, I got to the part where it recommends that you train your baby to sleep at night by not going to them and letting them cry. This is the part that I have such a hard time with. However, her nights of waking up crying and not wanting to go back to sleep with any amount of consoling have made me feel like we have to do something different because she is clearly unhappy and I am exhausted. There are stories from parents and most claim that their baby only cried for 20 minutes before going back to sleep. 20 minutes is a long time to lay there and want to comfort her, but it's also a long time to be up trying to comfort her and have no success. Most parents said that within a week their baby was sleeping through the night, so I found this encouraging.
So, I made a plan and Aaron agreed that it sounded worth trying. She gets up at 6 AM and nurses, she eats breakfast at 8, she is laid down for a nap at 9, she nurses when she wakes up, she eats lunch at 12, she is laid down for a nap at 1, she nurses when she wakes up, she can nap in the late afternoon if she needs it (sometimes on the car ride home), she has dinner around 6, and she has a bath and nurses before bed at 8.
We put our plan into action last night and took the book's advice and turned off the monitor knowing that I would wake up if she was really crying. I laid there not falling asleep, dreading listening to her cry during the night. I finally fell asleep after a while, but woke frequently to listen for her. Every time I woke up it was quiet. By 4:30 I couldn't take it and snuck in to check on her and she was fine. At 5:30 I heard her wake up and went in to her. She greeted me by putting her hands on my cheeks and giving me a big baby kiss. She then proceeded to nurse peacefully for the next 20 minutes!
She had a good day today and went to bed easily. I have been saying prayers all day that she will sleep tonight and that I will have the resolve I need to get us out of this cycle of waking up many times a night.
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