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Hawaii Babies
inamra
member
STTN Question
inamra
member
LO has been sleeping 5 hours fairly consistently (on his good days =P) but we don't seem to be able to get past that. I searched online and some people say that when they're infants (on a side note, at what age are they still considered "infants"?), their bellies aren't big enough to hold enough to STTN. Is that true? What I know is that when he wakes up at 6am (on the dot too), he's starving.
He also doesn't fall asleep until 1am (on the dot again)--it feels so late, but I can't get him to sleep earlier. If I put him down earlier, he just stays awake in his crib, then fusses/cries in 30 min. If I put him down earlier while he's already asleep, then he wakes up immediately and stays wide awake until he fusses/cries. Using a paci doesn't help either. He'll use it for it a bit, then spit it out. But once it hits 1am, he knocks out and will sleep until 6am. It's like something magical happens in the air when it's 1am or something =P
Is 5 hours already pretty good at this age (~2 months) or how do I get him to sleep longer??
Sept 2008 Wedding | May 2010 & Mar 2012 Babies
This discussion has been closed.
Re: STTN Question
I think 5 hour stretch is great, but the thing you could work on is encouraging him to go down earlier so his total hours sleeping overnight is higher, even if he wakes to eat. - only if you want to though...
example - get him "down for the night" at 9-10ish. do a dream feed, or just know that he will wake to eat once overnight, if you can feed him before he fully wakes it wouldn't be such a struggle to get him back to sleep (if you think he's waking b/c of hunger only... with Jack that is all it ever was - no gas, no mental need to be awake other than hunger).
I never scheduled things before Jack was in his own room b/c it was easy to hear him fuss, pull him into bed, feed him and he was lights out again.
now that he is in his own bed I put him down at +/-8pm and then either he wakes up (if he did not fill his belly throughout the evening) or I dreamfeed when I go to bed at about 11 - this circumvents the 1-2am feed he had been doing and he sleeps until 5-6am. (feed him again and he usually dozes off until both DH and I get out of bed (by 7).
I'm wondering if he hits that sleep cycle window at 1. JaysgirlJulie knows more than me, but I remember her talking about the cycles and how if you miss one it's difficult to get them to sleep until the next window. I know that when Jack was the small he would easily go down for nap on the dot ~2 hrs. from his last wake up time. Not sure how this applies to night time but if it worked that well during the day there must be some correlation to night as well... What is his evening nap schedule like?
5 hours straight is STTN! So congrats! You're right, babies, especially under 4 months old need to eat about every 2-3 hours, sometimes more if they're having a growth spurt.
You could start putting him down earlier (like around 7 p.m.) but expect that he'll be awake by 9 or 10 p.m. for a feeding. When Libby was that age she'd go down from 7-9 p.m. and then 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. and then 2-6 a.m. and 6-9 a.m. We bed share the so the "nightime" wakings were just enough to nurse and go back to sleep, most nights I never fully was awake.
Sounds like at 2 months you're doing a great job...just know that the expectation to get 8, 10, 12 hours of straight sleep before baby is one year old is fairly unrealistic. Yes, SOME babies might do it, but that is definitely the exception and not the rule. If you want to read a good book I recommend Elizabeth Pantley's "No Cry Sleep Solution"...she has a website too...great tips and information on LO's sleep needs/patterns.
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
I also wonder about the size of his little belly. He sleeps a lot at night -- about 11-12 hours. He'll sleep in 4-6 hours stretches, which is fine for me at this point (3 months).
He goes down between 6 and 7 pm, and will feed twice before he wakes the next morning at about 6 am. I'll nurse him before I sleep and then wake once during the night. And each time he feeds, he chows down, so I can tell that he's truly hungry.
If he somehow goes longer on his own, I'll take it as a sign that his hunger needs are met, but otherwise, I'm not in a rush to push it further. Even though 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep sound really wonderful right now!
Does B nap a lot during the day or evening? A and I keep pretty busy during the days, and he only catnaps, which I think have helped him sleep more soundly during the night. I let him sleep whenever he wants, but I like that he gets the bulk of his sleep at night now.
Oh, and the question about naps reminds me...I forgot to mention naps. He stopped napping as much. He'll go for about two naps all day and sort of sleep while he nurses during all our feeding sessions. Then he'll be awake until our next feeding but not nap again, so the pattern looks like this: falling asleep while feeding, awake, falling asleep while feeding, awake...with an occasional nap between the awake and feed. I try to keep him awake while nursing (we also change him in the middle of a session to wake him up but he sleeps through it sometimes! He's such a heavy sleeper when he nurses but light sleeper any other time, like when I try to put him down for the night) but he just keeps falling asleep on me while still nursing (in his sleep?). I suspect that is also why he spits up a lot but that's another story...
5 hours is great for a 2-month-old! Technically, I think 6 hours is STTN, from what I've read. But both is better than the 2-3 hour stints that newborns do!
IMHO, if he is going back down until 10am, then I think his sleeps cycle needs to be moved back. I mean, if he's sleeping 1-10am, with one wake-up, then your goal would be to move it back so that he's sleeping 10pm-7am, with one wake-up.
At this age, a 9-10 pm bedtime is totally normal and what you should gradually shoot for. I like MauiWedding's suggestion of a dream feed at 11pm before you go to bed in order to (hopefully) ward off the 1am wake-up. You might still get a 3-4 a.m. wake-up tho.
All that said... If the 1am-10am sked works for you... Go with it. It's just that when you go back to work, a 10pm-7am sked might be easier for you. :-)
I would also respectfully disagree about 12-hours STTN being unrealistic... True, not every baby does this. But you have to be positive and TRY to help your baby get there! If you write it off as unrealistic and never attempt to get there, then you'll really miss out if it's something your baby can do! :-)
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
Amen, sister. I actually know several people whose babies sleep 10-12 hours straight. Most of them sleep trained and CIO. I would do just about anything for that much sleep. Actually, I'd be thrilled to get 8 straight hours at this point.
Hmm, this is exactly why I cannot get behind babies under one year of age consistently being expected to sleep 10-12 hours each night. There are plenty of studies about why sleep training and CIO is not good (physically or emotionally) for babies, but you'll still find plenty of parents who do it. To each her own, I guess. Definitely not the route for us, but if it works for you and your family then that's all that matters.
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
i think that at his age, sleeping 5 hrs straight is awesome! it is true that his little tummy can only hold so much, preventing him from sleeping longer. some babies do, but most don't. i wouldn't worry about getting him to sleep longer for now, but i would try to see if you can find a way to get him to bed earlier than 1am. i used to put miss A to bed between 11pm-midnight (when i go to bed) but i've slowly moved it to 9-10pm and now i am working on getting it to be 7-8pm. i think when they are younger the 10pm-ish bedtime works out well for many parents' schedules so i'd shoot for that for now.
he may actually have trouble sleeping at night b/c he isn't sleeping well during the day. i probably wouldn't consider him being half asleep while nursing to be actual sleep time, even if you have trouble waking him sometimes during the diaper change. does he wake up and cry when you put him down after nursing? if you keep holding him does he cry as soon as you pull him off the boob?
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
Our boys have odd sleeping habits, and I've found that if we feed them too late at night, they won't sleep as long as if we fed them earlier. What I mean is that if we put them to bed between 10-11.30pm, they'll sleep through until 7.30-8am. BUT if we put them to bed between 11.30-12pm, they'll wake up at 5.30am every.single.time. It's really weird but true. So the only solution I've found is to feed the boys earlier, even if they're not really hungry (they won't always drink their entire bottles, but as long as they eat something it seems to work).
Some of the other ladies have recommended a dream feed, which is a great idea if you can do it. My boys simply won't eat unless they're wide awake so that doesn't work for me, and I'm jealous of mamas who can do it!
I agree with this... Meant to say something. Sleeping during nursing doesn't count as a nap. Actually, you should try to keep him from NOT sleeping during nursing. Have you considered the E.A.S.Y. routine from the Baby Whisperer? 2 months is the perfect time to try it out. Basically, they Eat, then have Activity or Awake time, then they sleep and when they wake up, they eat again. The cycle repeats every 2-3 hrs.
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
FWIW, we would never let Alexa CIO!!! To each their own, but that's not something we personally support either. :-)
And it depends what you mean by "sleep training." If you mean putting the baby down drowsy but awake so that they can learn to put themselves to sleep (very important skill!) then we absolutely did that. And we used dream feeds. And moved her bedtime earlier. So if those things are considered "sleep training" then they are very important!
The only point I'm making is that helping your baby sleep 12 hours straight is totally possible! I like the book you recommended, the No Cry Sleep Solution. I also like the Baby Whisperer. And Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby. :-)
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
I'll look into dream feeding more...it might work well since he's already used to sleeping while nursing anyway =P
Here's where I have a question...
While I don't think 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep is impossible, I do wonder how you know your baby is ready for that. When Adrian "wakes" during the night, he eats and goes straight back to sleep. And when he eats, it's full meals, not snacking, so I take that as meaning he's truly hungry.
I don't believe in CIO (at this point), so I'll get up to feed him when he fusses loudly enough for me to hear him from our bedroom. That ends up in the following schedule: put down at 6 pm, feed at about 10:30 pm, feed again at 3-4 am, then wake at dawn. He's drowsy through the whole time, but eats very hungrily.
Based on that little info, if I were to try to get him to sleep without the 3 am feed, would I just ignore his cry? Try to help him back to sleep with a paci or other soothing technique? I'm curious how one might encourage their baby not to feed in the middle of the night, if it seems that they are truly hungry during their nighttime feeds and not just waking to snack or to soothe with nursing.
He's gone progressively longer with his sleep spells as he's aged, so I sort of feel like he'll likely continue to do so. Especially once we introduce solids and he has bigger meals at dinner. No?
There is a difference of thought on this question... Some would say that babies can sleep 12 hours at 12 weeks old. I TOTALLY DISAGREE!! However ,there is a book out that promotes a "strategy" to do that. I think that's what Lori means by sleep training... It's a bit extreme.
It sounds like your understanding is exactly what mine is. Your baby needs to be able to eat enough during the day to sustain them through the night. Some BF babies can do that earlier (my friend's baby did), but most need to wait until they start solids (that was our case).
It sounds like you are very in tune with what Adrian needs are... It certainly sounds like he really does need to eat! Around 5 months, I started to suspect that Alexa no longer "needed" to eat at 3 am. She would only nurse one side or only nurse for a very short time. I got the feeling that she was waking on habit... But I was reluctant to stop feeding her when she woke until after she started solids and I felt confidant that she was getting enough.
So it wasn't until she was around 6 months that we worked to drop the night feedings. We NEVER let her cry. If she was hungry, I fed her. But we tried to give her a paci or a bottle of warm water FIRST. And if that got her back to bed, then yay! If not, I would feed her. It didn't take long to get her out of the night feedings. She started going 11 hours around 7 months... To some, this is very late. To me, it was just right. :-) HTH!
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
when you say he doesn't cry until 30 min after you put him down - do you mean he's half awake and then cries 30 min later....or he sleeps for 30 min and then cries?? b/c if he is sleeping for 30 min then i think that's fine!! miss A used to only take 30 min naps when she was that age and it's normal, even though some babies do nap longer. while using the swing is great you don't want to start using another "crutch" so to speak....only difference between using the swing vs using nursing is that you can get a little break...but ultimately you'll have the same problem of baby becoming dependent on something (or someone) else to fall asleep instead of being able to fall asleep on his own.
w/the dream feeds they can wake up but they quickly fall back asleep by the time they're done nursing...sounds like you could totally do the earlier bedtime and then circumvent him being completely wide awake until 1am by just getting to him around midnight and doing a dream feed.
i agree w/what Malia said about this... i really don't think that babies that young can go through the night w/o eating (their tummies just aren't big enough and BM gets digested so quickly)...i wouldn't try to drop that 3am feed....it's normal for babies to need to eat 1-2x/night (sometimes more) when they are younger. like Malia said, sometimes they wake out of habit when they are older to eat when they aren't really hungry.... there are times when miss A will wake up and she'll cry but it's not a wail...and then if I give her a minute it becomes more like fussing...and at that point i know she isn't hungry and i give her 5min before getting to her (as long as she doesn't escalate during those 5 min)...usually she just goes right back to sleep....now if she is crying/wailing, then i go straight to her and nurse her... we haven't quite gotten to the point of not having that middle of the night/early morning feed just yet but hopefully now that we are starting more solids w/her we will soon.
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
This is EXACTLY what we do. I feel like I'm misunderstood and judged when it comes to CIO and I want to clarify that we DO NOT just let her wail for hours. When we decided to try to drop the 2-3 am feed (around 3 months) Brady would go in and give her the paci or do whatever to try to settle her back down to sleep WITHOUT feeding. My goal in this was to get her to sleep from 10-4 without feeding. Not unreasonable, in my opinion. I just REALLY wanted to get 4-5 hours of straight sleep once a night. It has gotten to the point now that she actually cries harder if we go in and touch her. So typically if she cries/fusses earlier than 4, we let her go. But we read her cry/fussing. We can tell if she'll settle herself or whether it will escalate. She usually goes back to sleep in less than 10 minutes. If it's after 4, I just get up as soon as I hear her and nurse her even though I think she might be able to go back to sleep on her own. She has slept 8 hours before, so I know she can do it. I just don't know how to get her to do it regularly.
I have read about what CIO does to babies physically and emotionally but I don't think that letting them fuss for 5-10 minutes is going to do them much harm.
But, like I said, I do know people who really did let their babies CIO and it worked well for them. I sometimes wish I could do it but Kaya is not a textbook baby and I doubt we could do it for 3 nights like my cousin did and then have her STTN consistently. She is consistently inconsistent.
Usually he'll wake up if I put him down, then gaze around for a bit, and then cry. It's really hard to get him to nap for some reason. He'd be wide awake the whole time and then get fussy (probably because he needs his nap) but doesn't actually fall asleep for one!
I actually am trying to follow EASY (as best I can!) I just don't know how to get him drowsy enough to put him down for a nap. So far, the swing is the only thing that worked. The other thing that sometimes happens is if I'm nursing him in bed (during the day) and I'm so tired that I fall asleep...then we nap together for the next 2 hours. What other ways do you ladies use to get your LO drowsy but not asleep before putting them down for a nap/for the night? I try to walk/rock him sometimes, but I'm still bleeding postpartum on and off actually, and when I walk around with him too long it gets worse, so I'm trying not to do that until I'm completely done with that. Sometimes the paci works, but recently, it's been less effective. He cries through it or spits it out.
On a side note, I just put him down at 10pm and he cried until I picked him back up again. Not going to bed earlier =( I'm going to try to nurse him now and hopefully get him in bed by midnight. Then slowly push it earlier an hour a day, if that works...
I say if you need to use the swing, use it. I mean, do whatever you gotta do to get him to sleep. For now, anyways. We used to put her in the swing and turn on the white noise app on our iPhone to get her to nap. Sometimes we had to do that to get her to sleep at night, too. Then we started putting her in her crib for naps on her tummy and now it's the only way she'll sleep. If she rolls herself over she starts to wail, even though she can roll onto her tummy. I think she doesn't realize she could do that and be happier. I usually rock and bounce her to get her relaxed for her naps and then put her down. She sometimes fusses and/or wiggles around for a few minutes before finally going to sleep.
As for moving up his bedtime, I think the sleep books say to do it 15 minutes at a time. Maybe doing an hour is too much?
I want to know this too!
It seems like most times I lay him into his crib down drowsy but awake, he'll quickly startle/wake up and eventually cry loudly. How do I get him to not rely on us rocking him into deep sleep?
And FWIW, I, too, have been trying the EASY thing (also as best I can) since he was pretty young and he still seems to need the pre-bedtime jiggle dance and shushing song to fall and stay asleep.
This is my understanding as well... 10 mins and under for fussing/minor crying. I don't consider that CIO either... It's giving them a chance to put themselves to sleep before interfering. VERY different than hours of crying, which I would/could never do!
Yes, I think I read 15 mins a night. That's what we did.
As for getting baby relaxed for bed... It depends...
For Naps -- Alexa is very obvious. She yawns or rubs her eyes. When I catch the first sign, or when she's been awake for 3 hours straight (used to be 2 hours), I immediately take her to her room and put her in her sleep sack (used to swaddle her in MB), then give her a paci.
I used to bounce her in my arms (dim light, wave sound playing) before setting her down. Not gentle bouncing in my arms, but heavy bouncing! I think I read in Happiest Baby that they like harder bouncing over little rocking. It used to put her into a trance! Sitting on the exercise ball also helped. You can also try loud shushing in their ear. Sometimes I'd sing a bedtime song to her as I bounced her (to help me keep track of how long I was bouncing her).
(Now we are no longer doing EASY, so I nurse her and then just plop her down in her crib and walk out. She'll roll over onto her tummy and crawl around a bit before sprawling out asleep.)
I would mention that we only started doing "naps" around 2-3 months... Before that she slept whenever... It was when we started doing the EASY routine and moved to the crib that I started to notice a nap pattern. Back then, tho, she didn't always nap in her crib. If I timed it right, I'd put her in the car and have her nap while I drove somewhere, like lunch. Then I'd put her car seat in the snap and go with a blanket over it and she'd sleep thru lunch! She would also sleep on walks. Or in her swing.
For me, the big benefit of doing the EASY routine was knowing that she was fussing because she was TIRED and not because she was hungry again. That was when the light went on for me and I began to understand her patterns more. HTH! :-)
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
For bedtime... I used to nurse her, and THEN put her in the Miracle Blanket. So if she fell asleep during the nurse while rocking, getting into the MB would wake her up a little. Not a lot, just enough that I felt she was not being put down asleep. Just one idea!
I would also add that it's a GOAL to put them down drowsy but awake, but that won't happen EVERY time, and that's OK. You do what you gotta do! When you put them down drowsy and they fall asleep on their own, you celebrate it. But if you need to rock them to sleep because they are overtired or sick or teething, that's OK too. The key is that you are trying to teach them and if you keep trying, they'll get it!
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
Oops, should've put him down at 12:45 instead of 12 last night if I read your & Christine's posts earlier. He ended up waking up at 4am, which is only 4 hours of sleep so it didn't work so well when I moved it by an hour like that =/ well, I'll try to see what works naturally for him tonight, then go in 15 min decrements from there on out. Thanks for the tip, ladies!