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April 2012 Moms
Sleep book recommendation!
The 90 Minute Baby Sleep Program
I bought this book because all of a sudden, around month 3 or so, when LO started moving around more and being more aware, he started to get crankier. My sweet baby that almost never cried unless he was hungry became really fussy! Trying to figure out how to get him more rest had become a challenge. At 4 months he started scooting/pulling himself forward and that made him wear out REALLY fast and he became cranky and exhausted. This book was kind of a miracle worker. I have done "experiments" (was too lazy to do it right) where we don't follow this advice and it becomes a disaster!
When he was a newborn, my Mom advocated to put him down to sleep as much as possible and I used my intuition for the amt of sleep that baby needed (a lot, basically). As he got more energetic, he got more resistant to naps. We were still able to put him down at night but naps were short or impossible. All hell broke loose when I went back to work and his schedule got screwed up and we were all pretty frustrated.
HOW to put your baby to sleep is covered in this book too, but mainly she addresses TIMING and WHY babies need more sleep than we think (at later stages esp.) As a result, my baby is so much happier! Basically, the program involves making a note of when baby wakes up and then putting him down 90 minutes after that time (or starting to put him down 5 minutes before the 90 min cycle is up). This is written by a sleep researcher who swears by these 90 min. cycles of energy, and I have become a believer! Of course as baby matures, these can be doubled and tripled, to the point where they only need 1-2 naps a day. So they become 3 hour cycles or 4.5 hour cycles. For example, at night LO takes his last nap around 4 and wakes up at 5 and then doesn't go back to bed again until 8 or so.
This basically means that instead of relying on a set schedule, you have to watch the baby for signs of sleepyness and stick to the 90 minute intervals. This is pretty hard if you're a busy Mom (who isn't?) - and esp. if you are working.
The one thing I am not crazy about is that the author advocates CIO, but she also recommends fading if CIO doesn't work for the family/child. That's fine but I'm not sure we'll go either route (although fading seems the most logical to me.) It's too early to teach the baby any self-soothing methods anyway, but it's interesting to note. We personally can't get LO to sleep in the crib but he sleeps for HOURS in my bed if I rock him gently to sleep, which is marvelous. I am a believer in "do whatever works" and figure it out later 
He won't sleep in the bed for the rest of his life anyway!
I'm sure this won't be the answer to everyone's problems but it's inexpensive (or free if you get it from the library) and a really interesting read! I got through it in a few days on my kindle. Worth a try if you are desperate like we were!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Sleep book recommendation!
I love this book, we live by this program. Maybe I didnt get far enough in (I only read up till 6 months so far) but I didnt get that she was a CIO advocate from it. Or maybe I just misread. I thought she was an advocate of rocking to sleep and wahtever it takes kind of thing.
As far as how long to follow. She says close to 6 months (maybe sooner), LOs last nap of the day will start to get shorter and shorter, and eventually fade. I've noticed DD can get away most days without the last nap of the day. Then after 6 months is a whole new program.
I love this book.
She says through toddlerhood, and you'll see them grow out of it naturally so you can quit using it when you see fit. She says they start dropping naps as they get older. I find that the more LO seems to learn to do, the more sleep he needs (although it's not like he is sleeping as much as he did 2 months ago, but you get the pt!). Obviously it's different for every baby, but the rule of 90 minutes seems to be the key. So that will become 3 hour or 4.5 hour intervals once they get older and so on...
I guess I wouldn't say she advocates for it per se, but she offers it as a way to teach them to self-soothe once they are old enough for it (so that they can sleep longer stretches through the night). From what I understand, she basically says that it seems like they don't necessarily NEED to eat in the middle of the night, but just get used to depending on it, and with your pedi's approval (if the baby is healthy enough) you can slowly start to cut those feedings and sush them back to sleep, and when they're old enough you can teach them self-soothing methods (including a mellower version of CIO and fading.)
She basically refers to it but doesn't completely dwell on it as the #1 method you should use, just says that there is a point where they are developmentally ready to learn to self-soothe, and you can do fading if you want to, but in the beginning you should definitely rock, sing, etc. to soothe them and help them sleep.
Does that make sense? It's somewhere in the middle of the book that she goes into it. I feel like that can be taken w/ a grain of salt and you can use whatever method you want to get rid of the middle of the night feedings.
Oh and yeah it seems like 6 months seems to be the magical # where they start dropping the 90 min program, but she says that every baby is different so don't be alarmed if they still sleep a lot at this stage. LO is 4 1/2 months and he is still technically napping 4X a day! It seems like so much and is weird to me, but he is SOOOO happy as a result.
Our schedule goes something like this btw (this is based on the schedule today, its close to this every day but the amt of naptime sleep varies so it's a little different every day)
8pm baby goes to sleep for the night
2am middle of the night nursing
2-6am sleep
6am nursing
6-7:30am awake time
7:30-10am 1st nap (this one was extra long w/ a brief waking period in the middle and then we both fell back asleep!)
10am-11:30am awake time
11:30-12:15pm 2nd nap
12:15pm-1:45pm awake time
1:45pm-2:45pm 3rd nap
2:45pm-4:15pm awake time
4:15pm-5:00pm 4th nap
5pm-8pm awake time
8pm bedtime
The stuff in italics are guesses based on past schedules, since he is in the middle of nap #3 and the rest hasn't happened yet today
The funny thing is I've tried to move his bedtime to an earlier time in the past but he refuses, and only seems to want to go to bed with the sunset and rise with the sun as well! Makes sense, that's part of what the author talks about in the book...
So I guess for us 90 min solution no longer works
have you tried stretching that time to 3 hrs?