-
Subscribe
-
5th January 2009
Reading About How to Get Your Infant Newborn Baby To Sleep 2 replies
Melina is nearing six weeks now - and a few people continue to ask (or brag) as to why my newborn baby isn’t sleeping through the night, and how their baby did. I’ve written about sleep a fair amount, but I always seek new information on this topic as I continue to struggle with Melina definitely NOT sleeping through the night.
A little note on this - there are 444,000 search results in Google for “getting your baby to sleep through the night” -
So, why doesn’t and what can I do to get Melina to sleep through the night? I’m reading “Modern Girl’s Guide to Motherhood” and loving it. It gave me lots of reasons as to why Melina is not supposed to or likely to sleep through the night at this age.
- Newborn infants under 7 lbs - may go less than 3 hours in between feedings
- Melina came home at 6 lbs 1 oz, so there you go, one issue already
- Infant 0 - 3 months - also the issue as to why she’s not sleeping through the night
- This should change, slowly but surely over the next few months - she should only wake for one feeding as her body weight increases and she can hold more food
- When babies reach 10 lbs, they can also hold more food to sustain up to 7-8 hours of sleep
- My infant obviously does not fit into either of these categories - she’s 0-3 months; and just now, just now weighs 8 lbs.
- Another issue that does occur within the first couple of weeks is getting days and nights mixed up - remember womb was pretty dark - and what time were you awake and active; does this affect your newborn baby’s schedule?
What am I doing that could keep her awake longer in between feedings, at night?
- Good to have baby routine putting her to sleep, but after that, when she awakes for feedings or other - lights, soothing sounds, music, anything that could possibly stimulate her - a no-no during the night, but okay during day; ambient noise during day is good
- Keeping her awake too late or too much? Melina gets plenty of cat naps, and 2-3 hour naps, but outside the crib - wonder if this is an issue - and I’ve yet to put her down as I know toddlers are at 8 p.m. at night. Can I really put her down at 8 p.m. as an infant? Or, will she be awake all night as result?
- Talking to her, picking her up, not so good, if outside the dirty diaper, something hurts, she’s cold or hot, or near scheduled feeding time (unless she’s being fed on demand which she was before now) -
- Two minute rule on letting her cry outside these things above - but try not to pick her up if these other issues aren’t the problem
- After three months, I believe is the time you can let them go something like five minutes, again if none of these other issues are present (Ferber method applies in part here)
- For example, melina is crying right now but it’s like she’s “talking” - not really active crying just talking some - however, in my experience thus far, this typically leads to active, strong crying; usually when she has her pacifier in
More soon, I have to go to her
- So tonight, I sat down to write out her scheduled feeding, pumping, activity, sleep schedule, so I could begin to figure out my own and how I’ll begin to fit my work in
- She should take 5-6 feedings at this age, or close to it in the next couple of weeks, and 4 oz of milk approximately
- I put her down after a feeding at 8:30 p.m.
- She woke at 10:30 for a feeding and diaper change; breast fed
- She stayed awake, with pacifier until nearly midnight, but stayed in crib and entertained herself - as it approached midnight, however, she was getting hungry and was ready for another feeding.
- Fed her mixture of pumped milk and formula (as I had just fed her at 10:30); total of 4 oz., hoping this will keep her asleep for four hours.
- Let’s hope for wake up time at 4:30 a.m - more on this new schedule tomorrow as it unfolds
One other thing - many people suggest the co-sleeper; here’s what I’ve noted thus far; and how I feel about the co-sleeper
- I’m not in agreement on the co-sleeper- I opted for the day bed in the nursery solution - that way I’m close by, but not right in the bed or attached to her bed - I can hear everything, yes, I mean every little gurgle, snort, breath, and toot-toot, when she spits up - you got the picture
- I think I am beginning to want to sleep in my room, with her in the crib in her room, but the first time I did that I found she had wiggled out of her swaddling, and slipped down the baby sleep pillow positioner, and was underneath her blanket - THE SIDS warning ! — thank God she cried bloody murder, and I responded very quickly
- As a result of this on the first night, I went back to sleep in her room last night - tonight I’ll try again starting out in my room
- Swaddling I think is key - the only issue here is climate control - and remembering that your newborn baby doesn’t have the ability to regulate their temps - so it’s easy to get hot in those swaddling clothes -
- I find that if I swaddle her, in general, if the swaddle cloth is light-weight, she sleeps really well for a while until she’s hungry or needs diaper change or gets too hot, etc. When I put her in just a sleeper, as they suggest for SIDS prevention, I find that all she does is kick her arms and legs around and increasingly becomes restless and cries more
Resources on how to get your infant newborn baby to sleep - what as a parent you need to know
Dr. Sears on Getting Baby to Sleep
Excerpt from Dr. Sears - thank you!
NIGHTTIME PARENTING LESSON #3:
Encouraging a baby to sleep too deeply, too soon, may not be in the best survival or developmental interest of the baby. This is why new parents, vulnerable to sleep trainers’ claims of getting their baby to sleep through the night, should not feel pressured to get their baby to sleep too long, too deeply, too soon.
2 Responses to “Reading About How to Get Your Infant Newborn Baby To Sleep”
Leave a Reply
To reply to this article, please enter your name and write your comment in the textbox below. Some HTML tags are allowed, but others will be stripped if you enter them in your comments.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
More from Laura Thieme:
Kristi says:
January 5th, 2009 at 12:50 am
*ahem*
WELL… LOL
Babies this small will generally sleep a lot. If you haven’t read it already, I would recommend the Happy Sleep Habits for Healthy Children (or some title along that line - it’s famous) and also the Baby Whisperer. I loved the Baby Whisperer because of the schedule she talks about. The schedule ROCKS. It’s a 3 hour schedule when babies are smaller and fed every 3 hours and then it goes to a 4 hour schedule when they get bigger, about 12lbs and up or so.
It’s called: EASY
I love the YOU time…
Eat
Activity
Sleep
YOU time
For both of my babies, I found that if I stuck to the schedule I generally had a much better day. The thing to remember is that they need a LOT more sleep then you think they do.
For me, this is how it went:
30-45 minutes - Eating - My children are pokey eaters…
30-45 minutes - Activity. This included changing the diaper, walking around, playing a bit…
So that was one hour to an hour and a half.
Then, I put them to sleep. Seriously. You have to do it before their yawn and look for their sleep cues. The books go over the sleep cues.
Now, since I nurse to sleep… it wasn’t exactly like that for G. But he was taking four naps a day for the first four months, then went to three, and is still at two naps a day. He won’t go to one nap a day until after a year at some point. I’ll see when he is ready.
But yes, he woke up a lot during the night but usually just to eat. I also would sleep with him at some point (while he nursed/slept) because it was easier for me. Here is an example schedule.
7am - Wake & Eat
830/9 - Nap
10am - Eat
12pm - Nap
1pm - Eat
245pm - short nap
330 - Eat (I always cluster feed in the afternoons! I like to ‘tank them up’ for the night)
5 - short nap
530 - Eat
630 - Bathtime routine
7pm - Eat & Sleep
Then we would wake up several times
G is older right now and takes two naps but he generally needs to sleep about 2.5 hours after he woke up.
7am - Wake & nurse
8 - Eat food
930 - Nap & nurse
1130 - Wake and nurse
12 - Food
2 - Nap & nurse
330 - Wake and nurse
5 - Food
7 - bedtime routine
730 - Sleep & nurse
430 - nurse and back to bed
7am - awake again
Laura Thieme says:
January 5th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Kristi - this is wonderful insight, and shared humor on what you’ve gone through with your two little ones. Thanks - love the schedule and the reading suggestions.