Happy 1-month-birthday little Rey!
I'm going to try to start writing in this blog more often, maybe even every day. Usually it will probably be incredibly boring, but I'm going to use this as a way to help me track and notice patterns and probably to do some venting or unsolicited opinion sharing. It'll also hopefully remind me to take lots of pictures of Regan. I don't scrapbook or anything like that, so I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures, but maybe this will help.
Regan is just starting to stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time. For the last couple of weeks, she has been pretty predictable. She wants to eat every two hours, almost like clockwork and around the clock. I've read that most babies will sleep for a somewhat extended time (3 or 4 hours) once a day or so, usually at night. Well, I haven't noticed that with Regan. I can usually predict when she'll wake up and start fussing to within a few minutes. If she does sleep for more than 2 hours, it's during the day when I'm thinking about other things and I don't always notice.
For the last couple of days though, she seems much less predictable. She might want to eat every 30 minutes for an hour or two, but only eat for a couple of minutes, and then sleep and/or play and/or cry for several hours before she gets hungry again. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but I'm hoping it means she might be ready for some sleep training. I'll be doing some reading on that.
The other trouble I'm having is that she often will only sleep if she's being held. I love holding and snuggling with her often, but I just can't do it all day and night. The best sleep I get right now is a couple of hours sitting in our glider chair with Regan on a pillow in my lap. I'm afraid she's becoming a comfort nurser, but I don't know what to do to stop that.
Any thoughts on sleeping training a 1-month-old? Am I behind the curve? Or should I let her continue completely on her own schedule for a while longer?
Hey Baylie! Love your blog. The sleep training thing is very tricky I think, and I would caution you if you think you're "behind the curve", as you put it.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, there are many shcools of thought about how early to start sleep schedules and whether your child is old enough to sooth herself to sleep. Because bottom line, thats what you're teaching them is to soothe themselves to sleep.
The second thing I would mention is that you is that Rey is due for her first growth spurt around four weeks, and you might want to wait that out before trying to implement anything. Google "the period of purple crying" and "Wonder Weeks Chart". Four weeks hit Vi pretty hard, but it may not hit your child as hard. The chart was helpful to gauge the impending growth spurts when your kid is developing normally, but they handle it by being more clingy, crying, and their sleep is disrupted.
We decided to sleep train Vi around 6 weeks because a pattern emerged and we worked off that. She was sleeping longer stretches at night (3-5 hours), but she wasn't settling until 9, 10, or even 11. She was really cranky at night, so I figured...she could scream downstairs or upstairs in her crib! So we worked off a 9pm "bedtime" and trained from there. Eventually, she had a 7:30 bedtime and it saved our evenings. Two hours in the evenings with the spouse is a lifesaver.
Maybe you could try keeping her up for a few more minutes after a feeding during the day, but not at night, and expose her to lots of light. Exposing babies to light during the day helps them organize their sleep. If she won't go back to bed after a nighttime feeding, let her cry for awhile. She'll be ok. Once she starts sleeping 3-4hr stretches at night, you could try sleep training for an actual "bed time". There are other ways to help her sleep longer at night--swaddling is one we use so Vi knows its sleep time. Once you have a routine for bedtime, that helps a lot too.
Be sure she gets full feedings so she can go longer without food. Vi was at around 2.5 hours for awhile then dropped back to 2 hours--I think it was a growth spurt. Now she's back at around 3 hours during the day. I'm blabbing. I hope this helps! See "My Letter to Suzy" blog for the full story on Vi.
Trust yourself! Your baby's needs are different than other people's babies. Take what you need from several sources.