You are a pretty good nighttime sleeper (I cringe as I write that because putting it out there on the Internet just seems like tempting fate). You generally go to bed around 7:00 or 8:00pm and wake up at around 4:30 or 5:00am. It took much work from both your daddy and I to get to this point. The first three weeks you slept in the bed between me and your dad. I had to put a stop to it because I'd have a little heart attack every time I woke up and saw that the blanket had creeped up closer to your face. One middle of the night I woke up with my arm over your head (over, not on). Still, it freaked me out so much that I immediately started bawling (remember how in a previous post I wrote about how I was a mess the first few weeks?) and your father thought I'd cracked up.
So after that we moved you to a bassinet next to my side of the bed. What a joy it was getting you to sleep in your bassinet by yourself. Can you sense the sarcasm? You'd think we were putting you out in the doghouse in the backyard. We spent weeks soothing you a million times in the night. You're bassinet was stupid. The vibrate thing didn't work. So I read on the WB group that another Mom had taken the vibrate thingy out of the bouncy chair and put it in the bassinet. I tried it and it seemed like it would work but then I noticed
that it was slowly creeping it's way around the mattress and I was afraid it would bonk you in the head.
Then we tried the manual jiggling of the bassinet. It seems like your favorite thing to do was start to cry so that one of us would have to pick you up and bounce you. When you were calm we'd lay you ever so gently back down and the one of us would have to jiggle the bassinet (while shhhhing you) until you fell asleep. I can't count the number of nights I fell asleep with my arm over the side of the bassinet. I'd wake up when you wanted to nurse again with a numb arm and a sore shoulder.
Eventually you learned to take a soother and we learned the joys of swaddling and a routine and now we have it pretty good. I take you upstairs and we change your diaper, give you a quick spot clean and put on your pjs. We read a book and you get swaddled before you get a before bed snack. You get a burp and rock in the glider before I put you to bed and give you your soother. Most nights you stare around for a while and then go to sleep. Your nighttime grunting, groaning, tossing and turning will be an entire post to itself later on.
Naps, however, are a completely different matter. It's my fault. Back when I was much more sleep deprived it was easier to let you nap on me for an hour and a half and actually get a bit of peace than to fight with you to sleep by yourself. Plus I was too nervous to let you out of my sight much for the first few weeks. Definitely wasn't ready to trust your safety to the baby monitor. So far the longest I've gotten you to nap by yourself is 20 minutes. That isn't a nap. It's a tease. So today we started nap training.
I noticed you yawning and stretching around 10am. Here's how the first solo nap attempt went:
- Change diaper
- Quick snack
- Put in bassinet
- Soother
- Reinsert soother
- Reinsert soother
- Reinsert soother
- Gently pat belly to calm you down
- Slow down belly pats in hopes it makes you sleepy and I can stop patting before all the feeling leaves my hand
- Reinsert soother after your flailing hands knock it out
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Pin down flailing hands
- Pat, pat, pat.
- Leave room. Slow. Slower. Sudden movements will wake the beast.
- Accidentally step on creaky spot in floor
- Freeze. Don't even breathe.
- Coast is clear, make way downstairs.
- Remember that I forgot to turn on the bloody monitor
- Creep back upstairs and turn on monitor
- Practically float back downstairs so as to avoid any and all possible noises.
- Enjoy 30 blissful minutes. By enjoy I mean do the dishes.
Hugs and Kisses sweet girl,
Mommy
We play that soother game too! :)
ReplyDeleteGood on you for trying to break the swaddle habit. I know we should but can't seem to make myself!