The life of an infant consists almost entirely of intake, output, and sleep, though sleep predominates with some little tykes getting up to 18 unconscious hours a day. So it is no surprise that conversation about infants revolves around the sleep issue. People ask how new parents are holding up and, as the youngster ages, if she is sleeping through the night.
The book On Becoming Babywise claims that adhering to a feeding schedule will have your infant sleeping through the night by 8 weeks. We bought into the system, envisioning our pre-parental sleep habits. How disappointing, then, to find out "sleeping through the night" only implies five straight hours of sleep! What! - that's barely more than a good nap, definitely not enough to wake up refreshed, and it certainly doesn't allow for beauty sleep!
The last five nights Megan has put in almost six hours between feedings, but I am not writing to brag about my seven week old sleeping through the night; quite the contrary: I am writing to complain. Here the reader may stop to exclaim, "The audacity! How arrogant!" and the cries will be even stronger from those who are parents themselves. I ask that you hear me out. You see, I am actually more tired now that my little dear is "sleeping through the night."
Previously, Megan's days and nights were fairly similar. She awoke for feedings every three hours and I wove my sleep into the interrim gaps however I chose. But now my little precious settles down for a long stretch of sleep, starting around 6 or 7 pm, a bit to early for grown ups to retire. "So what?," you ask? Well, come 4 am Megan has enjoyed a good ten hours of sleep and thinks it would be a fine time to start the day (with grumpy complaints if mom doesn't comply), and so I find myself much too awake in the crepuscular hours of the morning, trying to calm, coax and cajole my little one back to sleep, all to the detriment of my own rest!
Tonight we tried to keep Megan awake later. That was only semi-successful, but the final verdict won't be in until six o'clock tomorrow morning...
I definitely feel your pain. Henry has yet to "sleep through the night" even at 5 hours. However, things are improving. I read that "early to bed" does not necessarily mean "early to rise". So, Henry goes down sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. and we get up for the day around 7:30 a.m. In between, he nurses on average every 3 1/2 hours. Sometimes I get 4 hours between feeds. I have read that the "dream feed" (i.e. semi-conscious feed) helps the little one sleep through the night. To us, it sounds a little silly to wake the baby in the hopes of him/her sleeping longer, though I know it's worked for some people. For now, we're sticking to our routine, as it works for us, and we just hope he'll stretch his sleep into longer segments. If he wakes before the 3 1/2 hour mark, I give him a binky and he goes right back to sleep.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, best of luck to you. Do whatever works for you...all babies are different and for every piece of advice you hear from a friend, family member, total stranger, etc. you will find just the opposite advice from some other "expert".
Doesn't it suck that "sleeping through the night" equals six hours? I remember I was very disappointed when I learned that. It doesn't do you much good when the kid goes to sleep at eight at night. She sounds like she's doing really well though. Lily was about where you're at at the same age, and she eventually started going eight hours and now she's up to around ten hours at four months, so don't despair! It'll happen soon! I think Lily's pre- bedtime bottle laced with bourbon is also a reason that she does so well. She's only slightly jaundiced. I'll give you a call soon- just got back from Chicago (Lily's screaming was a lovely compliment to the jet engines.)
ReplyDeleteThank you for using "crepuscular". To me, seeing that word on your website is like getting a nice binky.
ReplyDeleteI remember just sleeping whenever William went to sleep at night- I never made it past 9pm anyway. You'll get there, though. All of this sleep deprivation will seem like a dream when she learns how to scream "no" at the top her lungs at 6am in the morning. Oh, and when she learns how to spit and thinks it is funny to do it when you are visiting a friend's house.
ReplyDeleteWe never had any success with waking William up to match my sleep schedule. He'd be peeved and would give us a hard time about waking up. He woke up pretty much every two hours the first few months and then every four until he was about 11 months old. Talk about sleep issues! He didn't actually make it through eight hours of sleep until I weaned him. And WHY am I doing this again?? I think I temporarily forgot all this!