Keenan napping on Daddy’s back while hiking in Costa Rica!
Do you ever wish you could sleep-in until noon and wear your PJ’s all day? For some reason, today is that day for me. Even though I went to bed at a decent hour last night and technically should have gotten 8 hours of sleep, I am still SO tired! Keenan even slept-in a little this morning, so I should have no excuse for being tired! I guess it is a two cup (or more) of coffee kind of a day!
Speaking of sleep, I am fortunate that Keenan is a child who needs a lot of it (like I was when I was younger, and even now, as an adult, I need 8-9 hours to feel at my best). He started sleeping through the night (at least 6 hours) by 3 months and then he gradually increased to 8-9 hours by 4-5 months and at 6 months, he was sleeping at least 10 hours at night, with 2 naps during the day. Today, at almost two years old, he sleeps between 11-12 hours at night and takes an afternoon nap for 2-3 hours. On his best days, he gets a total of 14 1/2 to 15 hours of sleep! People have asked me how I was able to get Keenan to sleep through the night, and I believe it was attributable to three things: First, I implemented a daily routine of: eat, play, sleep that I adapted from the books, “The Baby Whisperer” and “Baby Wise” that I repeated over an over throughout the day, until bed time (keeping him up at least 2 1/2 – 3 hours before bedtime). Both books discuss the importance of routine vs. schedule and that by following a routine, your baby will learn its’ days from its’ nights, thus being able to sleep through the night. Secondly, Keenan started cluster feeding in the late afternoon/early evening, nursing every hour (for at least 30 minutes!) the last few hours before bed time, which helped him to “load-up” his tummy before bed. Lastly, if he woke-up in the middle of the night (once Keenan was 12 weeks old), my husband went in to comfort him back to sleep, instead of me, to make sure he didn’t associate food (aka…the boob) with waking-up. The first 3 nights were tough, but after the fourth day, he would pretty much go right back to sleep. After a couple of weeks, he wasn’t waking-up during the night anymore. In the end, I am not sure if it was one thing or all three things that helped Keenan sleep through the night at such an early age, but I will implement them with our future children and hopefully they will work just as well!
How many hours of sleep do you regularly get? How many hours of sleep do you need to function and feel at your best? Do your children sleep through the night?
Since Keenan and his cousin are napping, due to a very busy morning of playing outside and visiting a miniature pony ranch, I think I may take a nap, too! Have a great rest of your weekend!
This is such a relevant topic for us right now so thank you for touching upon it! Our daughter is almost 5 months old and has slept 9-10 hours twice. Oh how I wish she would continue to do so! She is so inconsistent otherwise, sleeping 4-6 hours at a time. Her naps are about 45 minutes; if we’re lucky, she’ll sleep an hour. We haven’t quite figured out what works best for us to ween her from night feedings. We’ve tried Ferber, “healthy sleep habits”, nurses’ advice, friends’ advice, etc. We get all these different suggestions and nothing has worked. We’ll give your approach a shot, but any thoughts how find what works best for us? Is this normal for an almost 5 month old? Because I feel like all other babies but mine are sleeping more than 8 hours at a time!
Everyone has their opinions/suggestions on how to get a baby to sleep through the night, but it ultimately comes down to what works best for each family. As far as finding what works best, it is challenging (to say the least) and it can take a lot of patience. When your daughter wakes-up at night, how long is she eating? Does she go back to sleep fairly quickly? One common thing that I have observed from a few couples who are struggling to get their babies to sleep through the night is the dads do not wake-up during the night to comfort/sooth them back to sleep.The mom is the only one who wakes-up, thus the baby associates waking-up with food (aka the boob). All of the babies are well over 3 months old, so it is no longer about being truly hungry, they are waking-up out of comfort and/or routine. For the couples that I know that had the dad get-up during the night to comfort their baby (us included), all babies slept through the night at an early age. Of course, this isn’t scientifically proven, but I have to think there is some truth to it. I would suggest having your husband only get-up through the night to comfort your daughter for 3-4 days in a row and by the 4th or 5th day, evaluate things. Ask yourselves these questions after the 4th or 5th day: Is she waking-up less or not at all during the night? Is dad able to quickly comfort her and put her back to sleep? Do you feel you have made progress? Good luck and let me know how it goes! Hang in there!
We’ve been pretty lucky with this but I also later read The Sleep Whisperer I think. For us its just routine, routine, routine. Our baby is now 3 mos and Saturday night he slept from 9pm until 6 am which was great, usually he wakes up between 5 and 5:30. Currently the routine that works is around 8pm I bring him to his room, lights off, sun almost down and feed him. With about 1/3 of the feeding left I make sure his diaper is good, swaddle him and turn on the white noise machine. I usually wait until his eyes are well closed and lay him down leaving the noise machine on (with automatic 1 hr shut off). Bedtime will NOT work if its a) still light out, b) no white noise and c) no swaddle. During the weekdays however, he has to leave with my husband for daycare at 4:30am so I actually wake him up at 4 to get him fed and dressed. It doesn’t seem to affect his weekend sleep schedule. I can’t speak to the daytime nap routine. I really need to ask the lady that takes care of him while I’m at work what routine she has. The weekends are always a guessing game for us as far as naps. We’re lucky if he take a 45 min nap these days.