So .... I thought we got lucky with Little Girl and her sleeping. She slept all the time as a newborn (even through the night on her first night home :/) and through the night once she hit about two months (speaking of sleeping through the night, your baby actually is considered to sleep through the night if they have slept a 5 hour stretch from usually midnight to 5 am). Then about a month and a half ago she started having the hardest time sleeping through the night. It has been awful! The only way we could get her to go back to sleep was to have her sleep on our chest on the couch. But even then it was miserable. So I decided I needed to do something about it. I checked out a bunch of books about sleep habits and helping your baby sleep through the night and I'm slowly going through them.
I started first with the book called Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. At first I was really excited. I agreed with most of what she wrote about at first, which was about our sleep patterns while sleeping and how babies need more sleep and how their patterns are different from adults until about six months of age. I knew that babies needed more but I didn't realize that their patterns were different. They tend to have more of a "light" sleep than deep sleep so they can wake up easier when needed.
I also learned more about routines for babies. I knew a routine was probably important but I have never been good at that, especially becoming a mom and trying to just survive every day. After Little Girl was born I never really got into a habit of waking up, eating, and doing general things at the same time. I just figured I'd go with her flow. I didn't realize she needed more structure than that.
After getting through how babies need a routine Mindell started talking about how you need to let your baby cry it out sometimes after putting them down to sleep. Reading this made my stomach queasy. Sam and I had tried a cry out training when she was about 5 months and we couldn't stomach it after two nights. And no offense to those that have stuck it out, but how can you stomach it? It kept reminding me of that show Reba. There was an episode where Cheyenne was dealing with her baby crying when needing to sleep. Reba keeps telling her that she needs to let her cry it out but Cheyenne doesn't think it feels right to her. I FEEL THE SAME WAY!
After posting about our dilemma on Facebook last week, I had a few people tell me that I just needed to let her cry some. I didn't like it though. She's my baby and I don't feel that her crying was really helping her learn how to sleep. And as Van says (in jest) "Is your heart made of stone?". Crying it out was not the answer for us. So yesterday after really thinking about it and what I had read, I prayed and then decided to switch to another book called The No-cry Sleep Solution. I haven't finished it but so far I have felt so good about it. She isn't a sleep expert, just a mom (and parent educator) who after having four kids of her own (with two that slept awful through the night) thought there had to be another way to either letting your kid cry it out or just dealing with it. So when her youngest was 12 months she begin her own research by reading what others had to say about babies sleeping and her own experience and came up her own program for teaching your baby to learn how to sleep.
She has it split into two sections. Newborns to 4 months and then 4 months to about 2 years old. The first section is about setting up good habits for your baby so that they slowly grow into a good sleeping pattern. I have just barely started reading the second section and so far relearned about routines for babies. One thing that I really liked though was routine for bedtime vs. naptime. In the Sleeping Through the Night book Mindell says you should have the same routine as bedtime for naptime just shortened a little bit. I didn't really like that idea though. I felt that would confuse Little Girl if I did the exact same thing (especially since for our bedtime routine it's just a diaper change, pj's, prayer, book, bed). However, in the No-cry book she talks about having a routine but make it different than bedtime. I love that!
Honestly I wish I had read this book when I first was pregnant right before having Little Girl. I think just being able to focus my mind on good habits for day and night time before having a baby would have really helped. But my mind was so fuzzy after having her and then time has just passed where she was a great sleeper, that I just didn't think it necessary. After the month of terrible sleep I read some stuff about sleep training and I implemented a routine for Little Girl this past week for bedtime which was also reinforced in both books I have been reading. It's still a little slow going especially because I still haven't finished the book but I really feel that this is a better way to go. It will be a much slower process, but isn't that the point? Good things take time to implement and be successful (plus I still have more books to read to really establish what I feel to be right).
And as Reba says "Nobody ... know[s] what's right for your baby more than you do."
That's awesome, good luck! Personally I also don't feel good about having them "cry it out" either. For us, we like limited crying-aka wait 3-5 minutes to see if they self-soothe, but if they don't, go in and help them be calm-pat, pacifier, shush, etc. This gives D the opportunity to realize he's okay, fall asleep, etc. And if he doesn't I can go in and reassure him I'm there, everything's okay, check and see if anything else could be contributing, and not feel I'm neglecting or putting off his needs. Then I try to be there with him as he sees he can get himself to sleep. But after 5 minutes-and I have a really hard time even waiting that long sometimes-or especially if D is clearly extremely upset even for a minute, to me, I agree with the author of the Baby Sleep Solution, that nothing is really being learned. They are just upset and likely going to work themselves up and not understand why mom's not being there for them. But I really agree they need a schedule and us mamas are much more sane if we help teach them how to go with our schedule, versus we conform to theirs, which really isn't "theirs" but becomes so as we "teach" them that. Babies learn by habit, or by the habits we help them to learn, just as with anything else.
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