February 2016 Moms
oxsarah7ox
member
Daily Schedule
oxsarah7ox
member
Hey ladies,
I am trying to get C on a routine, and I have to be honest, I have let her dictate it. I definitely need to get her on a schedule to get her back to sleeping better at night like she used to. I am interested in what type of schedule you all are using, especially if you are nursing. She's lately been going to sleep around 9 or 10 and sleeping 2 hours, then again at 12 or 1 and sleeping another 2 hours, then another nap for a half hour later on.
I did try to search, but nothing would load, so hopefully there isn't another thread about this I am missing!
I am trying to get C on a routine, and I have to be honest, I have let her dictate it. I definitely need to get her on a schedule to get her back to sleeping better at night like she used to. I am interested in what type of schedule you all are using, especially if you are nursing. She's lately been going to sleep around 9 or 10 and sleeping 2 hours, then again at 12 or 1 and sleeping another 2 hours, then another nap for a half hour later on.
I did try to search, but nothing would load, so hopefully there isn't another thread about this I am missing!
Re: Daily Schedule
I have to admit we don't have nearly as reliable a night routine. He has a fixed bedtime and wake time (7PM, 7AM). If he wakes up in between, I only go to him if he's crying and I don't talk or interact. Just change his diaper if needed, nurse him, put him back in bed. I do this because it gets me the most sleep, soothes him most efficiently, and I don't have to worry about him waking up all the neighbors with his screams, since we live in an apartment.
Good nights for us are waking 1-2x in that 12-hour period. Bad nights do happen regularly...3+ wakings, often in a similar pattern as what your LO is doing. I would like to do a bit of CIO at night to give him the chance to go back to sleep by himself on bad nights, but so far I've just gone to him since it means more sleep for me. :-p
6/6:30 wake up and nurse
7:30 solids for breakfast
8:30/9:00 nurse then down for first nap which is normally 1.5 - 2 hours
10:30/11:00 wake up and nurse
noon- solids for lunch
1:00/1:30 nurse and down for second nap
which can be 1 - 1.5 hours
wake up 2-2:30 play until 3:30 then nurse
5:00 solids for dinner
play until 6:00/6:30 then ready for bed, bath night is every three days, then jammie's and sitting and playing quietly until 6:30, then nurse and in bed before 7:00, normally 6:45.
Just want to note we used the Ferber method of sleep training for both of our boys around 5 months, oldest son is almost 6, and baby was 6 months on the 11th. I think letting them learn how to fall asleep on their own when they are tired really helped get them on a schedule.
E goes down without a fuss and is content to roll around and babble/make whale noises by herself if I wake her up while transferring her until she falls asleep. She was waking up every 1-3 hours though. When we did CIO, I put ear plugs in and fell asleep and DH watched the monitor. I woke up partway through (and told him that he was ruining our lives because I am dramatic) but she calmed down and went back to sleep within 10 minutes of me waking. He said the entire episode lasted 20-30 minutes total. The next night she woke up for 5 minutes. Since then she hasn't woken up (aside from leaky diapers) before 5-6 hours of sleep. She usually goes down between 7-7:30 and wakes between 2 and 3 to eat. I have noticed that she'll sometimes wake at 12-1 and roll around making happy noises and talking to herself. If I go in to nurse her, she's super happy to see me but pops off constantly and giggles and is really silly. When I stop, she'll happily roll around in her crib before going back to sleep.
Our schedule is pretty loose still. She still needs to nap every 2-3 hours and her waking times dictate when her nap times are. I can sometimes push her past that but she gets really sad so it ends up being pretty terrible:
2 or 3 am feeding (most days. Will occasionally sleep all the way until 5 or 6 am)
6/6:30 wake up
8/8:30 nap (30-45 minutes)
11:30/12 nap (45min-1hr)
3/3:30 nap (45min-1hr)
7/7:30 bedtime
I think once she drops that 3rd nap she'll go to bed really early. I'm a morning person (and have been my whole life) so I'm not surprised she is too. We're doing BLW so she's mostly just messing around with solids during our meals and not consuming much at this point.
Yes, sometimes he started to scream cry so hard he had trouble breathing. It was really hard to listen to, but I knew I had to do it (at least for daytime naps).
He'd always relied on me to nurse to sleep, but it stopped working when he was around 3 months old. He'd always be slightly awake whenever I moved and then he'd wake up. He was a hot mess, truth be told, and he'd end up sobbing for long periods of times without being able to be consoled, even before CIO. We had to do something. It was obvious he needed sleep, and the only way for things to improve was for him to learn to do that himself.
The approach we took was 10-minute intervals. I would nurse him, then put him down in his crib drowsy but awake. Then leave the room and let him cry 10 min before going in to check on him (check his diaper, check that he hadn't vomited, try to reassure him a bit by putting my hand on his shoulder and telling him he was doing a great job). Then I'd leave (even if he was still crying) and wait another 10 min. I'd do this a total of 3x before I'd call it quits and get him up to try again later. I think I've only ever had to do that 1x. The first few days it'd take him 15-30 min of screaming, then he started sleeping within 10 min, and in less than a week he wasn't even crying anymore when we'd put him down for his nap! He really just needed to cry by himself and focus on learning this crucial skill. I was a distraction. Once he figured it out, he was really good about naps (except when already overtired). Now he pretty reliably does 2x 2-hour naps and 1x 30-min nap daily. He is just now starting to drop the 30-min one.
He was able to use the skills a bit for night sleep as well. If I've nursed him at night, he usually goes back to sleep in his crib without an issue. The problem for us now is that he is often up every 2 hours all night. That wasn't ideal for me, but it was doable. Just recently, he's having trouble getting back to sleep in the middle of the night after I nurse him drowsy and put him down. I think I've gotten him into the habit of waking whenever he wants by usually going to him and feeding him so we wouldn't wake up all the neighbors. Sometimes I give it 5 minutes, but that's probably just not enough time for him to settle himself. To me, that means we probably need to do some CIO sleep training now for his night sleeps. :-/
CIO might not be right for you and your LO. My pediatrician is a huge fan of something called "Positive Parenting".Ha. It didn't work for us *at all* as my LO is very quick to dramatic fits if he's not happy. But it might be a nice and gentle kind of method for you. Everyone at our LO's clinic is trained in this method apparently, so it must be useful for many babies and parents.
Best of luck. I feel for you and your little guy!!
ETA: I removed the link because it was incorrect. I know the program was called Positive Parenting, but not sure which site is theirs. Basically they use a technique of come and going in longer and longer intervals from your baby's crib while putting them to sleep. Not picking them up, just reassuring them with your presence, calming them, then leaving again. The idea is to keep them from crying at all. (So for example, leaving and coming back to reassure after 30 seconds, then after 1 min, then after 2 min, then after 5 min, etc., until the baby is asleep.)
@=caenis=
Thank you for these tips. I'm going to have to do something. He NEEDS sleep!!! It SUCKS (and I don't even like the word sucks) to let him cry. I've been doing the Positive Parenting and it's not working. I don't let him cry and I really REALLY don't want to... at all. But he really needs help.
@oxsarah7ox
I've let my LO rule our roost, but I have been trying to lay him down for naps at 9, 1200, 3 and again sometimes around 5-6 for a 10 min holding/nursing nap. He only naps for 45 mins max. And my LO usually ends up falling asleep around 9 only because I go to bed with him. It used to work out great, but now none of us are sleeping well.
Baby sleep is crazy!!!
I have Ferbers book "Solve your child's sleep problems", which I read when we did sleep training for our oldest, and again before our youngest, I would recommend it over just reading others experiences.
Everyone is happier in our house now that our youngest sleeps better, and I think it was harder for me than him! His smiley face when he wakes up reassures me that he is happy with how things are
ETA: She wakes around 7-8am, plays with me/nurses a tiny bit and then by 9 is very sleepy and takes a 1-2 hour nap. All her other naps during the day are short (30-40 min). I don't follow a strict schedule but she typically goes 1-1/2 to 2 hours before going down for one of her short naps. I do try to avoid nursing to sleep to help reinforce the settling herself to sleep but sometimes life happens and hunger comes right before sleep. About a month ago she was refusing all naps and it was frustrating but now she seems a lot sleepier and willing to go down several times a day
First we dropped the pacifier from bedtime, since he was waking up every time it fell out of his mouth. After one night of crying for 20 min when falling asleep, he could fall asleep without it. We always do bedtime at 7, so he gets a bottle or nursed at 6:30, then book, put in sleep sack, then we play the same song every night (billy Joel lullaby) and put him in his crib awake. He rolls around for a while then settles and goes to sleep. I started pushing his feeding later and later (i.e. When he woke up at 3 to eat, then I wouldn't feed him before 3am even if he woke up before then). I pushed it further and further, and once he was making it into 4:30, we let him cry it out. We went in every 15 min to comfort without picking up and he cried for an hour. The next night he slept 7:30pm-6:30am (we did this 4 days ago, and he has slept through the night since then). It was super hard to let him cry, but worth it because now he wakes up so much more well rested.
For naps, he is still on 3 naps a day. Basically 2-3 hrs of wake time between naps and the naps vary in length. I am doing 4 feedings of breastfeeding a day (7, 11, 3, 6:30), and food (oatmeal and fruit then veggies), a bit after the 7 and 3 feeding
Also, my peditrician was encouraching streaching him out between feedings starting at 2 months (eating every 4 hours), ans she said we could cut out the night feeding at 3 months (but I couldn't let him cry it out at that point), so it might depend on how big your baby is (mine is ~17 lbs and will be 6 months at the end of the week)