Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sleep Advice

We are having napping issues...any advice any of you experienced moms out there can share with me would be awesome! Here's what's going on with Ella...

Bed Time:
We usually put her to bed between 7-8pm (after nursing her). She typically goes down fairly easily and doesn't require much help falling asleep other than swaddling her and reading her our bedtime story as we rock her. We typically put her down drowsy but still awake and she falls asleep within a few minutes without crying (or very little).

Dreamfeed:
We feed her a bottle of breastmilk about 10:00 or 10:30pm. She drinks but pretty much stays asleep during this. We change her diaper, swaddle, and put her down. She goes straight to sleep (doesn't even act like we woke her to eat).

Night Feeding:
She usually sleeps between 4-6 hours (on occasion she has slept 7 or 8, but that's rare) and wakes between 2:00 and 5:00am to eat. She's still only 10 pounds, so I think she still needs this feeding and usually eats pretty good. We change her diaper, swaddle her, and put her back down after nursing. She lays there awake for 10-45 minutes, but falls asleep on her own. She usually will only sleep 2-3 hours after this though.

Morning WakeTime:
She usually wakes between 6:00 and 7:30 in the mornings, but it's dependent on the time she nursed in the middle of the night. I nurse her and play with her after she wakes (she is usually pretty happy at this time). I then pump and we go downstairs so I can have breakfast. I usually put her in the bouncer or rocker. Sometimes she falls asleep there. If not, I try to put her in bed as soon as I'm done eating, but this usually involves some crying and not much of a nap. I think she may be staying up too long here but I'm not sure...she will typically only take a 30-45 minute nap at this time.

Morning/Afternoon Routine:
I'm trying to feed her about every 3 hours. Sometimes she acts hungry (if she wakes early) and I feed at 2.5 hours and sometimes she is still asleep and I'll let her go 3.5, but never longer for the most part. ***side note: I try to get her to take naps during the designated nap times below, but that doesn't always happen... Also, we try to do the sleep, eat, activity (wake time) cycle.

So, here's an example of a typical day if she wakes at 7:00am...
7:00am nurse
8:30/9:00am put down for nap (usually naps for 30-45 minutes only)
10:00am nurse
11:00-11:30ish put down for nap
1:00pm nurse
2:00-2:30ish put down for nap
4:00pm nurse
5:00-6:00ish put down for nap
7:00pm nurse
get ready for bed
7:30/8:00pm bed
10:00/10:30pm Dreamfeed/back to sleep
2:00-5:00am Night Feeding/back to sleep
6:00-7:30am morning nursing

The main problem is that she is taking super short naps for the most part. We are trying to let her self-soothe some, so it takes a while to fall asleep. She is usually content in bed when I first put her there and talks to her bears or looks around for up to 30 minutes sometimes. Then she may get fussy, which sometimes turns into intense crying. I try to give her 5-10 minutes before going up to give her a pacifier, which usually calms her. Most of the time, she will drift to sleep at this point, but sometimes, the crying continues. I'm trying to get ok with letting her continue to cry it out on her own, but haven't been too good at it lately. Working on it and getting a little better. When she does drift off on her own, she often wakes after 30 minutes to an hour. She usually has peed and I think that wakes her during her sleep transition. It could be something else that wakes her that I'm not aware of.

So, what should I do at this point???
1. just let her cry for as long as it takes to fall back asleep (if that's possible) or
2. go change her diaper and put her back down to cry herself back to sleep or
3. go change her diaper and rock her back to sleep or
4. change her and keep her up and feed her again if it's close to that time or
5. go try to soothe her (pacifier and/or rock her) to see if she'll go back to sleep or
6. get her up and have some more waketime/playtime together before the next feeding or
7. do something else that I'm not thinking of...

There are times that she will take a good 1-2 hour nap. She usually gets one good nap in a day, but I'd really like her to be getting 2 or 3 good naps and then maybe a shorter one here and there.

We've noticed that when she does get 3-5 hours of good naps in, she sleeps even better at night and is so much happier all around.

I guess I'm just looking for any advice and/or to hear the way any of you did things with regards to sleep. She's 11 weeks old today, so she's still young for intense sleep training, yet we want to start establishing some routine in our days so that she takes good naps again! I know that sleep begets sleep, so I want to help her with that as much as I can!

Moms out there, help!!!

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5 comments:

  1. At that age, Caleb started having a hard time with staying asleep as well. I had his swing in his room and began letting him take naps while swinging. I swaddled him, then strapped him in, put on his sound machine, and let him swing. He usually slept longer for me bc the swinging put him back to sleep if he woke up. We did this for maybe a month or two and then transitioned him back into the crib with no problems. Mikaia slept in her car seat at that age. My ped. told me that they sometimes they sleep better slightly inclined (bc of possible acid reflux issues), which seemed to be true for both of my kids. Again, I had no problems transitioning my kids back into the crib when they were a month or two older. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

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  2. Oh, I forgot to add that my kids typically slept 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon, then another 30 minutes to 1 hour for the late afternoon after I changed where they slept.

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  3. A few things that worked for my littles... When they are held a bunch and lay down to sleep they start to miss the warmth and smell of those that attend to them, even at her early age... I would place a heating pad on their bed under a fleece blanket to keep in the warmth just before I put them down, I also made sure that they had something that had my scent in the bed with them as well. As soon as I went to lay them down, I would start some classical music, remove the pad, and lay them down in the bed. That always seemed to work well for me. A bouncer or swing is also a great idea as well. I have noticed from the beginning that a schedule is what all little ones need. I believe that you are doing a great job. Sometimes it just takes the little ones a bit to adjust so hang in there.. I hope this might be helpful... if not now maybe in the future. ---Cuz-JoLee

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  4. I don't really have any sleep secrets to share. I've read a million books/articles/websites, tried a million different things...I finally got Jordan to sleep through the night in her crib and then she got sick and now she sleeps in our bed every night! But reading this post it is quite evident Ella is very lucky to have a mom so dedicated to making sure she is happy and healthy. Wishing sweet dreams for your family!

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  5. Patty and I both read a book called 'The 90 Minute Baby Sleep Program' or something like that - it's really easy and talks about babies Ella's age needing to sleep after being awake for 90 minutes - so 3-4 naps per day at this age. As she gets older she will stretch to 3 hour wakeful periods. This is where Trent and Miles both still are - they take 2 naps per day. Once we started following this plan the lightbulb went off! We also didn't work on self-soothing until at least 4 months. I would nurse/rock/dance/sing Trent to sleep. When he got a little older he would get fussy while I was trying to nurse/rock/dance/sing, and I finally realized he didn't need my help anymore. Ha! He would still fuss some (and sometimes full-on scream) but if he was screaming while I was holding him, I figured he could scream on his own. And I am NOT the tough-type mom, so it was hard but worked. I didn't make him cry it out at night until 6 months, but by then he was big enough that it literally took 2 nights and he didn't even want to nurse anymore. Not to say he didn't wake up, but I didn't have to nurse him. Could just go give him a pacifier and get back in bed. Oh - and for a long time I would just let Trent sleep in my arms. ;) Good luck! It's hard, but you'll get it figured out!!

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