I've recently began reading the book by Dr. Weissbluth called "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". I'm finding myself quite amazed by what I'm learing about the benefit of sleep, and also amazed at how obviously ignorant I've always been when it comes to this topic. For example, "Sleep begets sleep." Now that in itself to me makes no sense, seems if you slept alot during the day, you'd sleep less at night. Evidently not so. If you are well rested, and getting the right amount of sleep, you sleep better. Also, the fact that staying up later doesnt necessarily mean sleeping longer. Usually quite the opposite, you normally wake up earlier, or at the same time, just feel worse. In his book, Dr. Weissbluth suggest waiting until your child is 4 months old to start trying to structure and schedule their sleep. He says that until that age, mentally they aren't really ready, although we all know of kids that their parents swear sleep through the night at mere weeks old, my first daughter was one of them. By 4 weeks, she would normally sleep from about 10 or 11 pm, until 7am. Aubree, I'm lucky if she goes 11pm to 2am, she is up often, but not for a long period, usually nurses, literally in her sleep. Even though she is technically to young to start trying to develop a good routine, I have started using things from the book. For example, he feels babies should normally stay up for about 2 hour increments, and after 2 hours, or before if they start showing signs of sleepiness, start getting them ready for a nap. With his method, you can use any means you desire, rocking, nursing, bouncy seat, swing, where I've noticed with other methods I've heard about, they say to let them soothe theirselves to sleep so they don't rely on any method of getting to sleep. Dr. Weissbluth feels the actual act of sleeping and getting the rest they need is more important than what it takes to get them there. In the past couple of weeks, I've noticed Aubree stayng up more and more, hardly sleeping at all in the early evening, and staying up straight from around 8pm to midnight. she's not been fussy or crying, just alert and up. A really happy baby. I was starting to think she was just one of those babies that just doesnt require alot of sleep. In the book, it says that babies who are like this, at some point will probably have what I call a crashing point, when they are so tired from being up all the time, they become a fussy baby, which would baffle me when that point came had I not read this book, I would think she was sick, or just a fussy baby. So, for the last 3 days, I have started going by his suggestion, and right around the 2 hour mark, making sure she gets a nap, and making sure she stays asleep, at least for an hour like he suggests. Call it a fluke, but it does seem to be working. She has her 2 hour nap in the morning, then an early evening/afternoon one, and is ready to go to sleep again around 9pm or 10pm. Eventually, when she's ready, I want to move her "bedtime" up to about 7pm or 8pm. I don't really expect her to sleep through a whole night anytime soon though, as I know breast fed babies are more apt to wake once of twice through the night sometimes until 6-9 months of age. I also know sleeping with her is not discouraged in this book which is very important to me as it really does make breast feeding easier. She has slept in her bassinet a couple nights and it was so much easier having her beside me and just rolling over to feed her, instead of having to really wake us both up. When we sleep together the moment she starts fussing a little, I lay on my side, pop her on a boob, and she eats for about 5 -10 minutes and is right back out, she is never really fully awake. I don't think she even opens her eyes! Last night we tried letting Scott feed her a bottle when she woke up so I could maybe get some extra sleep. I left him an ouce and a half bottle out, since normally she eats fast and is right back out when I breast feed her. Didn't work, she went through that bottle, and since she was fully awake she wanted to eat more, so he ended up waking me and I laid her down with me and fed her. She did sleep for a really long stretch before she ate though, probably almost 5 hours, which is a record for her. I'm wondering if it was since she slept beside her daddy and not me. I have read that a baby can literally smell breakfast lunch or dinner on mom and don't sleep as well beside her. I'll test this theory again and see though. I will say I do love sleeping with her though, a bad habit to start or not!!
It just came a HUGE storm here! Start of race week so it figures. We rented our house out this year and have tenants coming in thursday to sunday. I'm hoping the weather holds out as they were looking forward to using the pool. It's been 95 and up a couple days last week and this week supposed to be 90ish all week. The pool is the warmest it's ever been, I just can't seem to find time to enjoy it. I've taken Bailey and her friends out a couple times and parked Aubree in the shade in her big Jeep stroller with a fan, that seems to put her right to sleep every time. We're having Scotts brother and family over Labor Day weekend so at least it'll get one more good use out of it!!
Posted by Beverly on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 16:30
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