Can’t sleep so I’ll post about sleep

Yes, I can’t sleep.  I think I had caffeine a little too late in the day.  Not smart.

So while I wait for Ella to wake up (she is stirring a bit) I figured I’d try and squeeze in a post on sleep.  Sorry for another baby related post.  :(  I just have learned so much the past few months that I NEVER knew about infants.  I’m just amazed that I was in the dark about this.  I really thought I knew a lot about taking care of a baby but I really ended up knowing nothing about sleep and schedules and such.

So the first 6 weeks of Ella’s life she slept a LOT and was so easy!  I mean, besides the basic sleep deprivation from waking up every 3 hours to eat, she was an angel.  She would always fall right back to sleep and didn’t cry much except when she woke to tell us she was hungry.  She wasn’t really on much of a schedule at all.  She just fell asleep here and there and we let her.

Then after about 6 weeks, that all went to heck.  She started staying awake longer and longer.  She also started to get crankier and crankier.   I remember the first night she was extremely fussy.  She was like that the entire evening, from about 6pm until about 11-12-ish.  I was hoping it was just a fluke.  But it didn’t stop.  We started giving her Colic Calm because we thought maybe she was just having bad gas.  She was pretty gassy, i.e. she definitely passed gas a lot.  So we figured when she was crying was when she couldn’t release it and it was hurting her.

After a few weeks of this, and the introduction of the first bad diaper rash and around the clock pooping, we figured out that she had a protein allergy.   So we made the switch and it seemed to help…a little.  Also sometime around there we started instituting a little bit of a Sleep-Eat-Play schedule.  We would let her sleep, then feed her when she woke, then play a little while (and hour or so) and then put her back to sleep.  Well, it was hard being consistent.  Sometimes we had a hard time keeping her awake even to finish eating.  Then once we got her awake awake, she never wanted to go back to sleep.  THEN, once 6pm hit and she was wide awake, she’d be fussy ALL evening until she finally crashed around 11 or 12 at night.  During those 6 hours, we’d try rocking her and soothing her and everything we could to get her to sleep earlier but she would not sleep and would instead scream in our arms.  Let me tell you, that was an extremely frustrating time.  I felt like the worst mother in the world.  I would lay my baby down and she’d cry.  So I’d pick her up and she’d actually cry HARDER.  There were nights she cried harder in my arms than when I left her in the crib.  Consequently, I cried too…a lot!  I just felt like I wasn’t even a comfort to Ella.  She just seemed miserable and I felt like we were failing her (the recurring horrible diaper rash did not help).

Anyway, about 2 weeks ago, I saw THIS post by Wheelbarrow Rider (WR) and started really thinking that maybe we weren’t reading Ella’s clues well enough.  We were waiting too long (till she got fussy) to lay her down.  WR stated that she would put down her son at the first fuss or signs of sleepiness (yawning, etc).  I was definitely not doing that.  So we started trying it.  It was hard because sometimes I felt like we laid her down too early because she was so happy and would lay there awake for awhile.  But then…miraculously, she’d fall alseep (on her own), without much crying at all (just a little fuss here and there but no wailing or sobbing by any means).

So then I ordered a couple sleep books.  I knew I needed more help…more details to really get this figured out because it was starting to work and I had a lot of questions.  The one I liked the best was “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.”  It took me awhile to realize I needed to skip over the mounds of unnecessary statistics he gives in the early chapters (I believe you, I don’t need a zillion stats that I can’t even keep straight the way he stated them).  I got right to the chapters on birth to 4 months.  It was a real eye opener.  It answered many of my questions and also made me feel a LOT better about how I was doing as a mother.  There are lots of testimonials in the book and some sounded like I could have written them myself.

I realized that babies under 3-4 months old should never be awake longer than 2 hours and some babies can’t really even handle being awake longer than 1 hour.  Ella actually tends towards 1 hour.  I started putting her to bed as soon as she look drowsy.  According to the book, drowsy signals are not necessarily just drooping eyelids.  Maybe just a yawn or maybe just a calm, quiet stare here and there (when she is not drowsy her legs and arm are going a mile a minute!).  But the key is, to start the soothing/nap routine at the first sign.  The author recommends a short time of soothing (whatever you want) and then lay them down drowsy but awake.  If you time it right, there is very little fussing.  If you wait too long, then they get overtired and resist sleep instead of going with it.

We started doing this with Ella and at first I felt bad.  I felt like I was constantly putting her to sleep (like I didn’t want to be around her, even though I DID).  But lo and behold, she was sleeping…a LOT!  And as a result, she started sleeping more at night and…gasp, in the evenings.  She started going to bed a little earlier every night.  She was happier when she was awake and rarely fussed.  I think she was so fussy because she was just exhausted!

So now, after 2 weeks, I feel like I have a different baby here!  She is AWESOME!  My husband had her by himself all weekend because I had to work and she was just a little angel.  She goes to sleep without barely a peep.  Of course sometimes she does fuss a little for maybe a few minutes, 5 to 10 minutes max but 90% of the time it’s 2 minutes or less and most times she is quiet before I get the door shut.  If she all out CRIES (even after 30 seconds), which is extremely rare now, then we get her and soothe her until she’s drowsy again and try laying her down again.  But since we’ve been so good about reading her and knowing when she’s ready for sleep, she barely ever cries when we lay her down.  She’s been going to bed around 6:30-7:30 and sleeping until 1 or 2 am.  Then she lays back down without a peep until 5 or 6.  Then she usually sleeps until about 8 or 9 am.  Not too bad for me.  If I went to bed for the night when she went to bed, I’d be getting tons of sleep!   Of course, here I am, it’s 1:15 and I’m awake and she’s about to wake up to eat.  (Might as well stay up until she eats now.)

It’s only been 2-ish weeks and already I’m getting anal about her naps.  I see how happy she is when she stays on track and I can tell if she didn’t get enough sleep (I run errands with her).  It’s making me want to never let her leave the house so she always gets her naps.  We know we can’t always do that, but I’m trying as much as possible.  It will be interesting when my mom and M’s mom start watching her here and there when I work during the week (the first time will be Wednesday).  I know they will be good about her naps but I’m hoping she can sleep just as well somewhere else besides at home in her crib.

Oh shoot, she is really stirring now.  I have to run.  I didn’t have a chance to proofread so hopefully this is coherent.  I may have more to add later.

Thanks Wheelbarrow Rider for posting that info, that info, along with info from several people who commented on it, really helped.  I was close with the Sleep-Eat-Play schedule but I was waiting WAY too long to lay her down…especially at night.

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