As promised, the following is a typical day for us in regards to sleep. For the past few weeks we have adopted the Baby Whisperer’s E.A.S.Y. routine, so we do a loose interpretation of that (Eat Activity Sleep You).
Between 7:30 and 8:30am: Eleanor wakes, we feed, do a diaper change and then hang out
Between 9:30 and 11:00am: We go to a cafe to get one good nap in. I work, Eleanor sleeps.
Between 12 and 2pm: Eleanor wakes, we feed and do a diaper change then hang out
Upon around 1-1 1/2 hours of being awake, Eleanor goes down for a nap which lasts between 20 minutes and 1 hour (1 hour is extremely rare). This cycle repeats until late evening (between 9 and 11pm) at which point I nurse her and she goes straight to sleep, and then she sleeps in my arms.
Now, “normally” she’ll sleep between 2.5 and 4 hours before waking for a feed, then we feed and she goes back to sleep for another 2.5 to 4 hours, another feed, and then usually a shorter 1-2 hour stint. The past couple nights, however, she has been waking every 2 hours. Not cool, baby…not cool. She is also eating every 2-2.5 hours during the day after her long morning nap which, at 12 pounds, I don’t think she needs.
I think part of her issue is her late bedtime, but I am not sure how to remedy that. Hopefully as we get a more structured routine, this will occur naturally. We are first tackling naps, then will worry about night sleep times and habits. Babysteps…pardon the pun.
As far as the nap thing, the following is my current strategy (modified from The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems):
About 15 minutes before she is going to go down, I bring her in the bedroom, talk softly, change her diaper, pull down the blinds and put on some soft lullabies. I then swaddle her and then we “hang out” until she starts fussing (usually that isn’t long). I then pick her up, kiss her, tell her good night and put her in the crib. She typically starts fussing/crying immediately. If she’s just fussing, I leave her down and begin my jiggle/shush routine. If she’s crying, I pick her up and try and get her to settle before putting her back down. If she’s struggling/arching her back and fighting me, she goes back in the crib.
Now for the jiggle/shush routine. The Baby Whisperer uses back patting, but Eleanor seems to respond better to a jiggle (this more closely simulates the bouncing she craves and is also more easily accomplished when the baby is in the crib) and then a decently loud shhhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhh. We keep up this routine while Ellie fights drifting off but after a couple minutes she goes into the “seven mile stare” where she is calm and ready to fall asleep. We keep up our jiggle/shush until she has finally let go, but then I keep it up for an additional 5 minutes, to help her through her final sleep transitions. After 5 minutes I stop phase out the jiggle, but I continue the shushing for an additional 5 minutes. She needs these extra 10 minutes, because she does not transition peacefully into sleep–she flails and stirs in her final moments.
This routine may seem lengthy, but I like it because I am not leaving her alone to cry and she seems to need the extra help doing her drift into sleepland. We’re going to try it for a few days and then evaluate the strategy. If only I could figure out how to keep her asleep for longer than 30 minutes…
*update: I camped out in her room around the 30 minute mark to try and catch her stirrings before they woke her up. Success! I shushed her at 44 minutes when she started fidgeting and she slept for 1h54. I’m so proud of her!
Sounds like you’re moving in the right direction! I always wondered if this was part of the universal plan to form strong connections between parents and child…so much giving, loving, and energy expended to form an indelible bond. Here’s a post from another blogging mommy on the subject: http://www.e-tells-tales.com/2011/11/update-how-to-get-your-baby-to-sleep.html
Thanks for sharing, Cynthia! This sleep thing must be part of the bonding–only unconditional love would give one the patience to put so much effort into these precious little beings.
Wow, well done you, I never managed to catch Archie when he was stirring to get him through to the next phase of sleep, that’s awesome.
What you’re doing sounds awesome. It’s amazing how powerful the ‘ssshhhh’ is. I honestly think it’s just a matter of doing this for a few weeks and then slowly doing less and less of the jiggle, as hard as it is, because they wake up and realise they’re not being bounced, jiggled, whatever, and want it, so (I believe) you do eventually need to get to a place where there’s no assistance, just a loving ‘put down to bed’ and then kiss goodnight. I think we did a couple of weeks of loads of helping him to sleep and then a couple of weeks of stopping ten minutes in and then a couple of weeks of just helping for a few minutes etc etc.
Well, that has only worked once so far. I think either she wasn’to going to wake or I got lucky….
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