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March 04, 2008
Sleeping through the night...
We don't want to get excited too early, but the kiddos have decided to start sleeping through the night.
Not quite sure how this happened, we haven't been pushing for it (they're only 3.5 months old), but we've been letting them determine their own night time feeding (we feed them both at the same time--so whoever wakes up first calls the shots). They've slowly moved their 3-4 AM feeding to a 6-7 AM feeding, sleeping for nearly 8 hours at a stretch. And most times, they'll wake up happy, smiling and babbling at us. Occasionally we have to pop a pacifier in, or pat them and let them know we love them, or pick them up and rock them back to sleep, or they'll get hungry earlier than usual, but even those moments are becoming more rare. I don't know if this is just a phase, I know they're still young and we'll probably have some issues later on, but for now we're really thankful. Especially with two.
The only book we really read on sleep training was one of the Baby Whisperer books. It's a non-CIO (cry it out) method that encourages parents to (1) listen to their baby's (or in our cases babies') unique temperaments in order to (2) guide them to establish good sleep habits rather than having to painfully break poor habits later on. We haven't followed the book religiously, but we've found some patterns that seem to help with their sleeping. Like giving them lots of exercise in the early evening, and cluster feeding before bedtime. Swaddling, especially with our SwaddleMe outfits (one of the best things we've been given as parents!) and pacifiers also help. Swings for nap-times, and lots of snuggles at bedtime are a usual part of the routine.
Neither one of us are comfortable with CIO methods, especially extreme ones. Not to wander too far into controversial territory, but I've seen advice that makes me really uncomfortable, like, let your baby cry for four hours straight without intervening. Now, if one of my babies is just fussing for a couple minutes in the process of going to sleep, I don't have a problem with letting them work through the process for a couple of minutes, and intervening if the fussing turns into real crying. I've read of parents who let their kid cry for ten minutes one night, five the next, and by the third night the kid is sleeping well. That seems fine! But for four hours????
I don't think CIO would work well for our babies in any case. Once they start crying, I mean really crying, not just fussing a little, it tends to escalate. I had a bad experience once that I don't want to repeat. We give our babies tummy time, even though they used to fuss about it. From everything I've read and been told, it compensates for putting kids on their backs to sleep, and helps them to develop necessary muscles. So we felt it was important to do it, even if they didn't like it. Now they enjoy it: they're turning over already (stomach to back), holding their heads up at nearly a 90 degree angle, and looking around. Anyways, early on I let Ian stay on his stomach for too long, and while I was doing a chore, he cried himself to sleep. I picked him up, and he woke up and just wailed in my arms like I never heard him do before. I still feel sick thinking about it. And I don't think the sleep that he had was a healthy kind of sleep, obviously he wasn't calm and relaxed when he woke up from it.
Anyways, I don't want to be judgmental towards other parents' methods, not the point of my post at all. I mean, I'm a three-month rookie at this whole parenting thing. I'm just super glad that at least for now, we don't have to deal with the sleep issues that can exhaust parents and children, and lead to difficult discussions and decisions on the parents' parts.
Thinking , deux bebes | By Tim and Jo | 01:36 PM
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Comments
colic changes everything. megan had it- kayla did not. It wasn't that I was *letting* her cry for 2 hours - there was absolutely NOTHING we could do to stop it (and believe me we tried EVERYTHING). It ended up that I was in tears as often as she was. But she outgrew it.
megan slept through the night at 2 months on (until she was five and then decide if she was awake in the middle of the night, so was the rest of the family.) Kayla didn't sleep through the night until age 2.
there are millions of books out there but every kid is different - even in the same family. We never did the book thing. We know people who studied every one out there... and ended up tossing them aside.
When it comes to kids, all ya gotta go on is your instinct. Sometimes it's the best thing- other times, you're just winging it.
Posted by: earthgirl at March 4, 2008 03:49 PM
I'm soooooo glad our kids aren't colicky. I know there's sometimes just nothing you can do to make that better. ;-)
Posted by: Tim and Jo at March 4, 2008 04:18 PM
Congrats! A restful mommy is a happy mommy!! And I LOVE the picture of the two of them sleeping together. My gosh. I just LOVE sleeping babies. They are so adorable. I could just scoop them up and kiss them. =)
Posted by: Heather at March 5, 2008 02:48 PM