I have been lucky. Really really lucky. And I say this as cautiously as possible so that I don't jinx it...but...Tzeitel sleeps through the night. She is 6 weeks old and she has been sleeping through the night for over 3 week now. I know we are lucky. SO lucky, but on the off chance that our routine for bed can help anyone else's baby sleep through the night, I am going to put it up here.
Now, we never expected that she would sleep through the night so quickly. We, like all parents, had prepared ourselves for the long haul of getting up 5+ times a night to change diapers, nurse, and spend countless hours walking her around, rocking, and doing whatever we could to get her back to sleep. I was prepared to become well acquainted with the sunrise, because I expected her to stay up until then on many nights, as I did when I was a baby (bless my mom's heart, she handled it like a trooper). So when we first brought her home and she only woke up twice that first night and went back to sleep pretty easily, we were pleasantly surprised. We marched our little family of three into the pediatrician's office for her newborn check bright eyed and bushy tailed, but we were thankful and figured it would never happen again. But then it happened again the next night...and the next night...and even the next...and over and over again until she started waking up twice, then once...and then the miracle happened, she slept through the night before she was even a month old.
So before we get into the detail's of how we arrived at the magical place we have, I want to say exactly what her sleep schedule is. There is not much too it, since she has been sleeping through the night she goes to sleep around midnight (and typically at midnight on the dot) and then she wakes up at 8, nurses and has a diaper change, goes back to sleep around 8:30 and typically sleeps until around 11 or noon. Occasionally she will wake up around 6 if Ryan is not quiet enough when he gets up for work, but when she does, she is typically really easy to calm back down and get back to sleep.
So the first time she slept through the night I woke up that morning and immediately noticed there was light streaming through the window. I looked at my phone, saw that it was 8 a.m. and immediately realized Tzeitel had not cried a single time that night! As a month does, I panicked for a second. My hand flew to her chest to make sure she was still breathing as she laid in her Rock n' Play next to me. Her little eyes shot open in surprise, I think I might have accidentally scared her as much as she scared me! But there she was, just staring back at me, healthy and well after a full nights rest! So what do I think really did it?
Well I think there are a few factors that helped her, and all of them had to do with trying to make our bedroom and her sleeping area as similar to the womb that she was so used to as possible.
The first thing is the fact that we room share. She sleeps in a Rock n' Play as close to the bed as I can get it. Sure she can not hear my heart beating as she could when she was in the womb, but in the beginning when she was waking up frequently I think having her in the room established that I was still very close by. All she had to do was let out a little whimper and she could hear my voice, anything more than that and I would immediately pick her up, give her a cuddle and determine if she had anymore needs.
Secondly we listened to her in terms of a bedtime. This is probably the only time in her life that we allowed her to pick her bedtime, but I figured that if we gave it a few days there would probably be a time that was natural for her to have a long stretch of sleep. I soon discovered for her that midnight (often times midnight exactly on the dot) was about the time that she would close her eyes and sleep for a period of 5 hours or more. Now, I won't sit here and act like I always planned to do things that way and oh look at me I was right, because for about 3 nights after she came home I failed miserably as doing a bedtime routine around 9 or 10 pm. After a few nights I learned very quickly that she was in no way ready to sleep that early, so I decided to listen to her and figure out when she WAS ready for bed, and for us, it worked like a charm.
Thirdly, we incorporated vibration into her sleep time. For Tzeitel, I think this was one of the biggest factors. We were lucky to receive a Rock n' Play at the baby shower, so one evening when she was being particularly fussy I decided to throw some batteries in that puppy and give it the old college try. She loved it, and it was very soon after we began using it that she started sleeping through the night. I actually think it was the second night we put her in it that she slept all the way through. I think the vibrations remind her of the movement of my body while I was pregnant, which is comforting for her. The other important aspect to the vibration though is that we only turn it on for her at night, that way she will hopefully learn that the vibration means it is time to sleep. If she naps during the day, it is usually on my chest or in Ryan's arms.
The fourth aspect of her nighttime sleep is being swaddled. Usually we use the swaddle sleeper given to us by the hospital. It works well because she cannot squirm our of it, and it is easy to unzip and un-velcro during her first 8 a.m. wake up and diaper change. For her it is soothing because it limits her motion, mimicking the environment of my womb.
The fifth and last thing she needs to sleep through the night is white noise. She absolutely loves white noise, as I am sure it reminds her of the swooshing and swishing noises of my body. For white noise we usually just pull up an 8 hour long black screen of rain noise on youtube, like this one and have that playing on the laptop throughout the whole night. Another reason I think this works well is because if there is a noise in the night, it will not be as sudden as it would be if the room were quiet and I think it drowns out most of the noises she would be hearing.
I want to close this by saying we are lucky. We are SO lucky and after battling Hyperemesis Gravidarum, (read more about that here) a pregnancy that went over 42 weeks, transferring to the hospital, a nicu stay, and myself needing surgery, the luck is so welcomed by us! I do though want to express sympathy to the parents who are having a tough time with sleep. Sleep deprivation is no joke and my heart goes out to you! Parenting is hard and know that you are doing a great job. I know that every baby is different, but I also hope that these tips are able to at least help some parents get more sleep and enjoy their baby.
#infantsleep #sleep #safesleep #sleepthroughthenight #newborn #infant #baby #newbornsleep #Rock N' Play #swaddle #parents #parenting #newparents #newmom #newdad #mom #dad #autisticdad #autism #marriage #married #husbandandwife #husband #wife #relationship #families #family #familyof3 #mommyblog #crunchymama #mommyblogs #blog #newblog #youngmom #youngwife
Kommentare