Before Sadie was born I was certain I'd be set to "sleep with the baby". I'm able to sleep pretty much anywhere at anytime. I figured I'd get my sleep even if it wasn't during standard hours. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Sadie is a GOOD sleeper but under her conditions! She's very predictable and for the most part sleeps 3 hours to the minute and then wants to be fed. At first things were good and it was an adjustment on my part. Sadie was sleeping in her crib at night and things were going well. In the day I was mostly holding her or letting her sleep on her Swing/Boppy (she hasn't slept in her crib during the day yet). Then a little over two weeks ago she started to fuss and refuse the crib at night. It was BRUTAL. D would stay up with her until midnight and I'd get MAYBE 2 hours sleep before I'd be up the rest of the night. The only way I'd get any rest was if I put her in her swing and curled up on the couch. I was getting so little sleep!!
The GOOD news is that we've resolved this issue! I'm now getting up to 8 or 9 hours sleep (total, not consecutive)at night and have been for the past 5 days.
Here's the 3 things we've changed:
1) Dream Feed - My internal clock wakes me up every 3 hours now and if not, and I hear her stir, I RUN to get a bottle ready. We do not wake her up to eat for her midnight/3:00 am feeding which means she sleeps from approximately 9:00ish pm until 6:00ish am in 3 hour increments. I'll change her diaper only if it feels heavy or is dirty. Otherwise, we wait it out. I know this may put some people off but if she was sleeping through the night we wouldn't be waking her JUST for a diaper change. We have no issue with rash and although she has wet her diaper, in the morning she is dry. After all, pampers claim they can stay dry for 12 hours!
2) White Noise - We've taken down our FP Precious Planet Motion Soother which was too loud and too bright in favor of the FP Precious Planet Mobile. I'm hoping the Motion Soother is something we can use in the future because I really like it! Instead we're using the Mobile without the Mobile attachment or turning on the projector. It has a great "Heart Beat" sound which Sadie really responds to. It seems to sooth her to sleep or keep her sleeping and I give this A LOT of credit because it seems like she started sleeping better as soon as we started using it!!
3) Swaddle her legs - We did not continue swaddling when we came home from the hospital because Sadie prefers her arms to be free. She's like Momma and tries to twirl her hair. She also likes to sleep with her arms spread out to her sides. Because of this we had been struggling with using blankets. We have 3 sleeps sacks (2 Halo and 1 Grobag) and she HATES them. The envelope blanket didn't work either. She kicks her legs and kicks them and kicks them and kicks them! Our daughter is going to run a marathon one day! Finally I tried swaddling her lower half leaving her arms free and it works! She's no longer fussing with her legs!!!
So there you have it. I'm getting some sleep and it is great! I'm hoping that eventually we get a bit longer than 2.5-3 hour increments but for now I'm NOT complaining!!!
Glad to hear you are getting some sleep again, it makes such a difference!
ReplyDeleteYay to sleep! C is still eating every 3 hours and I would love longer breaks but he is also like clockwork. Good job on figuring out the magic formula!
ReplyDeleteGood job on getting her to sleep! We've just had a crappy month of sleeping too, but Ian has slept through the 4 out of the last 5 nights. The only change is that we put his cool air humidifier on high because he was stuffed up - I think the noise of it has made the difference. That and he's eaten less before bed, so his diaper isn't as wet. Sleep is so precious when there's a baby in the house!!
ReplyDeletewow - you gals are very smart! So glad you worked out something You make is sound so easy but I know it must have been really hard at the time. Sadie is beautiful! So - a marathon runner - cool!
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