In typical Sara fashion, I have been doing as much research as possible on parenting. Now I’m not sure if the information was helpful or just stressed me out. You see, when I read through the books I find that I’m not doing half of what they suggest. Then I worry that I’m not stimulating my baby’s development enough, or that I’m fostering bad habits in my kid.
This week I attempted to follow a suggestion in my Baby Whisperer book. The author, Tracy Hogg suggested that at about 6 weeks you can “cluster feed” your baby to encourage the baby to sleep through the night. To cluster feed, you feed your baby every two hours at night – for example, at 6 pm then 8 pm the 10:30 or 11 pm. This last feeding is referred to as the dreamy feeding, as the baby should be sleeping by the end of it. Then, without burping or anything you can put your baby to sleep and in theory he or she should sleep through the night.
So, this week I tried to cluster feed Xander. Instead of being sleeping at the 10:30 pm feeding, he was wide awake and stayed that way until 2:30 am. At 3 am I gave in and fed him again. He slept from 3 am to 6 am, and that was the only sleep we got that night. Granted, Xander is only 5 weeks old, but since I have seen him sleep 6 hours at a stretch, I didn’t think this would be too much for him. Maybe cluster feeding works for some kids, and maybe it will work for Xander eventually, but at the moment, it was the longest night we’ve had so far, and I was definitely questioning the wisdom of this particular baby book by 3 am. The theory seems logical, but in practice it was quite miserable.
So, if anyone has any suggestions for great parenting books (I already have What to Expect In the First Year of course) and/or any suggestions on how to encourage babies to sleep through the night, I’d love to hear about them!
Ps. I think I should get a special pat on the back for writing this post while nursing Xander
baby, baby books, infant, parenting, parenting advice, parenting books, sleep, sleeping baby
People who looked at this item also looked at…