If there is one thing that everyone told us before we had Teddy, it is that we would not be sleeping very much after his arrival. To a degree, particularly in the first few weeks, we had been warned more strongly than was justified. Teddy slept 4, 5 and 6 hour blocks right from the beginning, followed by nursing, and then another 3 or 4 hour block. It really wasn't that bad at all. Sometimes he was in bed with us. Sometimes he was in bed with me. Sometimes he was in the basket by the bed, or by the couch where I slept some nights.
After 6 or 7 weeks, we started getting occasional nights where the longest block of sleep I got was a couple hours long. Around 8 weeks, I'd occasionally have nights where he'd be up hourly to nurse. He'd then revert to longer blocks, but the 5 and 6 hours in a row were a thing of the past. 4 hours was a memorable stretch. 3 was more typical. I expect to take 11 hours to get about 8 hours of sleep now.
Along the way we made some changes in an effort to get those longer stretches. We got a white noise machine, which definitely helps me get back to sleep, and which our child care suspects is in fact helping Teddy stay asleep. When my husband caught a series of colds, we split us up, so his snoring didn't wake me up when I was lucky enough to get some sleep. Days when Teddy has a long nap tend to be the same days he sleeps well at night (go figure, but apparently normal). Unfortunately, he almost never has two naps, and the one nap he does take is rarely 2 hours long. Right from the beginning he had a lot more quiet alert time than many babies, which we appreciate because he's interesting and fun to be around and seems to be learning quickly. But it's also a little tiring.
When he does nap, he usually does so in arms. Sometimes he'll nap in the swing, or can be transferred to the swing after he has fallen asleep, but usually he'll wake up. A few times I've taken him to bed in the middle of the day, nursed him to sleep and fallen asleep with him. Lately, I've been taking him for walks outside, in an effort to tire him out enough to fall asleep more reliably. This seems to be working okay, but does require about an hour outdoors to really work well.
Teddy is, bizarrely enough, on our schedule. He goes to sleep sometime between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. most nights. When we traveled to the East Coast, he adjusted quickly to that time zone and when we returned, we hoped to keep him on the earlier schedule. We failed abjectly. Fortunately, he's happy to sleep in until 10 or 11 a.m., subject to the usual breaks for nursing. He's most likely to take a nap starting between 2:30 and 3:30, waking up between 5 and 6 p.m. if we're lucky. The white noise machine helps keep him from startling awake at every little noise in the city neighborhood we live in.
When I have been able to transfer him from arms to the bed, it has helped a lot to place a hand on his belly, even more skin-to-skin than through clothing. The hand seems to reassure him that he does not need to wake all the way up. When my husband or I sleep next to Teddy, it helps to have his body along ours. The more separated he is, the more likely he is to wake, or nearly wake, repeatedly through the nap or the night. Along a body, with an arm on his other side, it's easy to put a hand on his belly to reassure him, or to hold one of his hands when he starts to wake and stretch to keep him from hitting himself in the face and waking up all the way.
We have friends who say they Ferberized their four month old. We cannot imagine doing that to our baby, nor can we imagine it working if we tried. My intention is to keep taking him for walks, and try to get him to more reliably nap in the afternoon for a couple hours, and hope that helps him sleep better at night.
The night after I wrote the first draft of this section, Teddy nursed more or less throughout the night, as near as I can tell. However, I didn't completely wake up for a lot of it, even when I was sitting up, so I'm not sure. The one time I woke up (when my husband heard Teddy crying and came to the bathroom to help me with him on the potty) completely, I realized that I'm at my most cranky at night now when I'm only half awake, and my husband asks me some question that requires me to wake up further in order to answer. I had the presence of mind this morning to tell him what had been going on, and to make some specific suggestions on how to help me wake up without being cranky when he wants to ask me something, or offer help with the baby. Live and learn. I'm inclined to think that here-and-now, for me, the interruptions in sleep are largely unimportant. It's how they are navigated that matters.
In Baby Matters, a summary of current research relating to infant feeding, sleeping and other infant care practices, the author discusses at length the relationship between feeding and sleep, the effect of position on sleep and the relationship of sleep to SIDS. According to her, stomach sleeping, as was once practiced widely, does things to the baby's neck that impair breathing and waking, which probably explains the stomach/SIDS connection. She also discusses the impact of cow's milk proteins on digestion and sleep. I was really annoyed from before we had our baby at all the people who wished on us a baby that slept through the night early and often. I felt that was equivalent to wishing on us a baby that was sick and in danger, even though everyone meant it in the nicest possible way. Having now slept with a baby that sleeps in very short blocks, nursing frequently and sometimes half awakening even when he doesn't want to nurse in order to wiggle about and pass some gas, I am more convinced than ever that expecting a baby to stay asleep for extended periods is foolishness. Better to rearrange our lives -- and eventually our society -- to be more supportive of these frequent wakings.
After an inadvertant dairy exposure (in my food) that made both Teddy and me quite sick, Teddy was well for perhaps a week, and then came down with a really rotten head cold. Drooling (well, he was doing that anyway), snotty nose (pouring out when you hold him face down in the morning), dark yellow waxiness in the ears and, most distressing, repeatedly whacking himself in the face around the eyes, a little below, a little to the side and occasionally just above. We think that means sinus pain. With no fever, and since papa had the same cold, we see no particular reason to call or visit a doctor, but it is sad to see him so miserable, even when he's so agreeable about it. He sleeps a lot more during the day, alternating about an hour awake with an hour asleep (finally! a baby that sleeps just like the books! kinda. And sure enough, he's sick. Geez.), and when he's awake, he's usually nursing. At night, awake or asleep, he's also nursing. He's taken a serious interest in our water glasses. Papa gave him a sip from his. Other than seeming a bit surprised, Teddy swallowed happily. I know colds make me drink a ton. Presumably that's what all the nursing is about. Fortunately, since side lying is working well, and papa makes sure I get a nap without Teddy in the evening and in the morning, we seem to be surviving this episode without any additional sleep debt.
As for the afternoon nap, our child care provider, a wonderful young man, is quite miraculous at getting him to sleep for two or so hours in the afternoon. He is in fact so good at it that Teddy seems to be expecting this now, so having a routine is clearly good. Teddy has had a consistent bed time (shortly after midnight) and relatively consistent getting up time. If he wakes up at 9 a.m., he may want to stay awake for an hour, and then take a nap at 10 a.m. If he doesn't wake up completely at 9 a.m., he'll continue to sleep and nurse until 11 a.m. (which, if we're both lying down, I can sleep through a lot of). He then won't nap in the morning (since it's pretty much over anyway). He also naps relatively reliably in the evening around 6:30, for an hour or hour and a half. I sort of wish he's wake up less often to nurse (he's averaging four or more at night), but this seems fairly doable for now.
Teddy does indeed sleep with me, and naps in arms (mine or child care's). I bought a baby hammock from Amby Baby, which child care and my husband are slowly getting Teddy accustomed to. He has stayed asleep in it for a couple hours, which is the second longest he's slept in anything without someone else (the longest being four hours in the car seat).
Time passes, and Teddy's sleeping continues to change. He was napping at this time around two to three times a day, for a total daytime sleep of three or more hours. Some nights, we got a four hour block again. Bedtime is around 11 p.m. and he wakes up around 9 or 9:30, with a nap from around 11 or noon for about an hour.
He is dry through a lot of the night, and when he wakes up for that hour or two in the morning, he is very good-natured, and pees a lot, repeatedly, catching up from sleeping. He doesn't eat during that time, because he's stuffed; after a couple hours, however, he is hungry again and can generally be nursed back to sleep for a little while.
A General Discussion of Getting Enough Sleep for Everyone in the Family
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Allen
Created October 11, 2005 Updated March 30, 2006