Being Sara

A few weeks ago Xander had his 6 month checkup. He did great - hated the shots, as all kid do, but his doctor was happy with his development, etc. The only criticism the doctor had was that Xander is not sleeping through the night. He suggested essentially letting Xander cry-it-out for a few nights, and then we would all sleep better. Zach decided that we should get right on the sleep training, so that night we started. We put Xander to bed in his crib - which he hasn’t really slept in (he’s been in a bassinet in our room), and we didn’t give him a bottle in the middle of the night, and we didn’t bring him into bed with us when he woke up. Needless to say, it was a pretty miserable night for everyone.

We didn’t do the full cry-it-out method - we did go in and comfort Xander at regular intervals. We did this Thursday night too, and then Friday and Saturday night Xander was visiting his grandparents. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night we continued in our efforts to get Xander to sleep through the night. We were all exhausted, and Xander wasn’t any closer to sleeping through the night, though he was starting to get a little nervous about bedtime. Finally, we gave up this cry-it-out method. Xander has been sleeping in our bed for the past week, and life has been much easier. Xander stirrs some in the night, and sometimes needs some help finding his pacifier, but for the most part, he sleeps pretty well, and we don’t usually give him a bottle. Some nights he has refused to eat dinner, and then he wakes up crying for food usually early in the morning.

I think in the next week or so we may try to transition Xander to his crib again, but I haven’t come up with any good solutions for what to do with him when he wakes up in the night if he’s in his crib. Since Zach and I both work, and we don’t have much vacation time to sacrifice at the moment, we’ve been doing whatever gets everyone the maximum amount of sleep. So as we continue to try various sleep methods, I’ll keep everyone posted, and if anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

baby, babies, infant, infants, parent, parents, parenting, sleep, sleep training, cry it out, no tears, sleep sharing, co-sleeping

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Before Xander was born I heard all kinds of warnings about how difficult babies are, and how hard the first few weeks/months can be.  I even wrote a post about this trend.  When Xander arrived, I was prepared for the worst - minutes of sleep every night, crazy hormones/baby blues, never having time for a shower or a meal, etc.

So, we were pleasantly surprised when Xander wasn’t that difficult.  He cries when he needs something, but when his need is met, he stops fussing.  At first, this was a game of elimination - are you wet? No, are you tired? No, are you hungry? Yep!  We are getting better a figuring out what he wants, and since he put himself on about a 3-4 hour feeding schedule, we generally have a pretty good idea of when he’ll want to eat. Even when we introduced bottles to Xander, he was amazingly easy.  The first attempt was successful, and since then, he has never questioned any nipple style, or even the temperature of the milk or formula that we’ve fed him.  This makes traveling with him much easier, since we can bring along some formula in a bottle, add water when he’s hungry, and keep going without having to find a quiet place and an extra 30-40 minutes to nurse him.
Don’t get me wrong - some days were pretty tough.  Some nights he just wasn’t interested in sleeping, and even though he was clearly hungry, he was crying too hard to latch onto my breast.  We definitely had our challenges, but the good stuff has far outweighed the hard stuff.

Last night Xander again proved that he is indeed an easy baby.  Let me start by explaining that the day we brought Xander home, we had our bedroom set up with a bassinet for him to sleep in.  When it was time for us to go to sleep, we set him down in the bassinet, and assumed that he would go to sleep, or at least lay there quietly.  Boy were we wrong.  So, that first night, we built him a little nest in our bed for him to sleep in without getting smothered by us or by bedding.  We tried the bassinet a few more nights with the same result, and eventually gave up and let him sleep with us full time.  During the day he will sometimes nap in his car seat, but we found if we let him sleep in his car seat at night, he would only sleep for an hour or two at a time, while if he slept with us, we could get in 4-5 hours of sleep at a stretch.  Despite this “accidental parenting” that we had started, we still wanted Xander to sleep in his own space.  I began to stress about the negative impact we were having on Xander, and wondering how we were ever going to convince him to sleep on his own - particularly when both Zach and I were back at work.   Since I was worrying about this too much, I decided to let this be Zach’s project, since he would have 6 weeks to change the sleeping arrangements.  Last night was the first attempt.  Zach and Xander fell asleep on the couch around 9pm.  I did a little housework, prepped the bassinet in the nursery for Zach and turned in around 10pm.  About midnight, Xander woke up.  Zach fed him, and put him in the bassinet, where Xander slept peacefully for 4 hours!  I nursed Xander at 4pm, and then Zach put him back in the bassinet, where he was still sleeping peacefully when I left the house at 7:30am.  I was so worried that the change in sleeping arrangement would be an uphill battle for us, filled with many sleepless, crying nights.  Xander proved me wrong by simply accepting this new arrangement without complaint, and sleeping more peacefully than I could have hoped for.  At this rate, he will hopefully be sleeping through the night in a month or two!

Another thought that crossed my mind this morning as I was marveling at how lucky we’ve been so far.  A lot of times you’ll hear people say that if you have a difficult first child, your second one will be easy and vice versa.  Since Xander is clearly an easy baby, it makes me nervous about what his future sibling will be like.  I know it’s just an old wives tale, but still…

babies, baby, difficult baby, easy baby, infant, infants, motherhood, parenthood, parenting, parenting challenges, sleep, sleeping

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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

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