This morning I texted my friend asking if she wanted to go for a walk around the lake with us and got a reply: “love to but my little one is still sleeping”. That was at 8:30am. In our household we call it a lunch time… because we believe that everyone (especially the mother) should start their day at 5am sharp. There will be a day I will have the same excuse not to go for a walk that early, but for now I just have to embrace having an insomniac baby and apologize to my liver for the insane amount of caffeine I have to dump into my system just to maintain a state of minimum alertness.
Sleeping at night got a little bit better around 3 months. At some point Leila was going to bed at 8pm waking up at 4am to eat and then dozing off for another hour before officially announcing the start of the day. During the day she was still fussy and very jumpy. One of my friends recently gave me a book called “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” by Marc Weissbluth, MD. He talks a lot about fussy babies and their sleep problems – it was as if somebody wrote the book about Leila. The first 150 pages are a bit painful… no offense Doctor Weissbluth, but no sleep deprived parent needs to read a chapter on “Why Healthy Sleep Is So Important” – realizing that I just spent a day walking around with the make-up only on one eye was pretty convincing to me. I wish Leila could read, because the explanation about the difference between the sleeping brain and the awake brain… would put anyone to sleep.
That aside, we are implementing a few of his suggested solutions to see if Leila can possibly develop a better sleeping schedule. I am doing a few things, but the biggest one is putting her to bed much earlier. According to Dr. Weissbluth, fussy and sensitive babies are simply overtired and exhausted because they do not get enough sleep. Surprisingly, most days Leila will go to bed without problems, however she would wake up way too early and would not go back to sleep. She would get about 12 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, however according to the research in the book most (non-fussy) babies of Leila’s age are getting anywhere from 14 to 16 hours of sleep. And that is why we started putting Leila to bed at 6pm instead of 8pm. I have to admit that I was really skeptical at first, but too desperate not to give it a shot. I was mostly afraid that if she went to bed 2 hours early she would wake up at 3am and call it quits… surprisingly she still woke up at 5am! The difference in her behavior was evident pretty much the next morning and it got better with each passing day. She spent almost an hour playing quietly with ONE toy, started taking a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day and we have not had our traditional evening tantrum in a while now. My cat is finally enjoying a much fresher litter box and I am hopeful that one day I will have time to put makeup on both of my eyes.
The quality of her sleep and night wakefulness remains a challenge. Leila still sleeps as if she is participating in a heavy lifting championship and because she goes to bed earlier she wakes up to eat at 1am. That technically would be only once per night if she did not wake up additional 2-3 times for no apparent reason. I am usually able to sooth her right back to sleep (without even picking her up) in less than a minute, however it still requires me to wake up and go to her room. And in case you were about to suggest – co-sleeping did not work out for us, because I am an extremely light sleeper and was never able to tune out her grunting. It has been tested and proven that for me getting 2 hours of consecutive sleep is better than 8 hours of listening to sleep babbling and Darth Vader breathing.
The book promises that if we stay consistent as she gets older the duration and quality of her sleep will also improve. It better… because the next step will be adding a shot of Brandi to her formula.
The whole going to sleep earlier just doesn't make sense but gosh it works. We just need to follow suit and go to bed early with our daughters. Then everything would be sunshine and rainbows and just pure greatness.
Adorable picture as always!
LOL at the adding Brandi to her formula.
I feel your pain. My little Hudson at 2 1/2 rarely lets me get a decent nights sleep. He is either totally up at 6am, or else he is wakes up every hour on the hour starting at 1am. Ugh! What's a mom gotta do to get some decent sleep around here!?
Oh goodness. I think I traded the ability to co-sleep with a baby who doesn't make noise for one that wakes just about every hour and a half to 2 hours. I lucked on the fact that he goes to bed around 10:30 and stays there until 12:30. At least I get a loooong stretch of interrupted sleep.
it's such a cute picture!! looking at it it's hard to believe Leila has issues with sleeping at night
well but she gets really cranky starting at about 8pm (I've been putting her to bed by 9 or 9:30) leading me to believe she'd really rather go to bed then, please. Hmmm. An added bonus could be eating dinner in peace with my husband… what a concept! I am just going to have to forgo the extra bottle and roll the dice!!
Glad you're getting Leila on a good schedule although the 5a.m. wake up is the pits!
Uh oh, I accidentally deleted part of my comment and didn't realize…oops. The beginning said, 'I love the picture of her sleeping! So cute! I am thinking of putting Annabelle to bed earlier, too. She sleeps…' (and then the rest is in the previous comment). Ah, technology.
Stick with it. It will work with a few tweaks that you find work for you. I used that book with my daughter and she used to be very difficult to get to nap or go to be. She now naps regularly and goes to bed at about 6 pm and wakes up at around 6 am the next morning. Sometimes she sleeps through the whole night and sometimes she wakes up because she's hungry, but goes right back to sleep.
Just be patient and realize that it's not always as quick as the book says. The thing is we read the books, but the babies don't.
Still, it really helped me when I thought I was going to lose my mind because of sleep deprivation.
I also notice how much happier she is when she's awake because she's getting enough sleep. She's just delightful now.
Good luck! Sorry this comment was so long. I have much to say on the subject and the book.
"I just spent a day walking around with the make-up only on one eye "
Ha! I think this says it all! You need to check yourself into a hotel room for a night and hang the do not disturb sign on the door. Tell your husband you'll take the next shift after you've had a good night sleep!
The progress may be slower than we'd all like, but it seems like Leila is really improving in leaps and bounds compared to just a few months ago. Plus, the change in her attitude while awake is realy noticible, imo.
Hayley has started waking up way earlier in the morning now, hungry. I think that's the last nudge I needed to start introducing solids…
Oh to be able to nod off like in the picture
Zzzzzzzz!
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Deborah
http://maternitymotherhood.net