I'll admittedly throw out two things firsthand. First, I had skimmed through babywise when Bryton was little because our lives were so awful for the first several months. I never got deep into it with him, because nothing worked. He was just collicky and difficult. Period.
So whether naive or whatever, I didn't even know that naps were supposed to last longer than 45 minutes. And to be honest, I didn't even know I really needed to initiate naps until probably 3 months in. So I can't tell you if we ever fought this with Bryton or not. It was never a conscious thought in my mind.
The second thing: we are not completely 'babywise.' We follow the babywise eat, play, sleep formula, and we are recognizing the 45 minute intruder currently. My goal is ultimately for Ansley to be able to self soothe herself, and in the past three days I've been able to put her down for her naps and her put herself to sleep with minimal crying. (I let her cry for about five minutes, go in, put the paci in, tell her I love her and to sleep good. She stops crying until the paci falls out, then starts again, but not as hard, and has herself asleep within about 5 more minutes. It's between 10 or 12 minutes each time. Not easy, but tolerable.) Then, almost like clockwork, she's awake at the 45 minute mark... almost on the dot.
We aren't on a consistent 3, 6, 9, 12 routine for eating or anything, I'm more following her cues, but they are reallllly consistent and go about every 3 hours, except for this dumb 45 minute intruder. (Which she has become really consistent with anyway.)
So here are my questions moms: (babywise or not... I just need suggestions)
- How do I beat this dumb thing? I've tried moving her naps up so she doesn't get over tired. And I don't know what to do when she cries. I mean, do I go in and try to rock her back or bounce her back to sleep? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of me putting her down and putting herself out? I've tried letting her put herself back out, and she'll just lie there for a little bit, and she's in and out a few times, but never out very long... and after about 30 minutes of light off and on crying I've finally gave up and went in to get her. Is it possible several 45 minute naps are what she needs right now? Because I don't think I can handle that :(
- Tell me the crying herself out eventually gets better. Granted, it's not for very long and it's not very hard for very long, but it goes against everything in my nature to listen to her cry. BUT, I've noticed that she goes to sleep faster and easier if she cries herself out than us having to bounce and rock her, because as soon as we put her down she wakes up and it has to start all over for her. So this is good for her right?
- And this one is a doozy: The past two nights have been impossible for nighttime. Maybe it is just so frustrating for me because naptime feels like such a failure all day and nighttime sleep has always been so easy. (Not to mention the fact that I'm exhausted by this point in the day anyway.) But the one time we don't do the eat, play, sleep routine is right before bed. She's never taken a good nap before bedtime so she gets tired at about 6:35 every night. (Again, almost on the dot.) I've tried moving her bedtime later, but everything I've tried has failed. That's just when she gets tired. We can usually make it to about 7 before we have her swaddled and start feeding her. NORMALLY, we feed her and put her down and we may have to get her up one time, not long after she goes down, to finish the bottle and we put her down and she's out for the night. (Sometimes she gets up around 4:30 or 5 to eat... other times she makes it until 6 or after and I put her on my stomach for another hour or so to get her to what I'd eventually want to be her wake up time). The past two nights, however, it's been a train wreck trying to get her down. We'll feed her, put her down, and she's up a good 5 or 6 times again after that. Then it's trying everything to get her to sleep... letting her cry, putting in a paci, bouncing, patting, feeding, you name it. I feel like all of the sleep training falls apart in the evening now. It's taken 2 hours the past two nights to completely get her out for good. It stresses me out (as this is my chill time of the day) and exhausts me to the point of tears. I'm thankful that she sleeps so well once she is finally asleep, but seriously, something has to give with her going down routine.
So ugh - there's my rant / vent/ plea for help. Moms who have been there, comment and let me know how you fixed this. PLEASE!
On a lighter note: I had to share the bare basics of my most recent Kroger trip. Another mega event week, we needed a good stock up after having to completely gut our refrigerator / freezer a few weeks ago since all of our food went bad in the power outage (grrrrrrr, 20 bags of stockpiled frozen vegetables... GONE... the only solace was knowing how inexpensively I bought them for to begin with). Anyway, I spent $92 and saved $99. Just over 50% savings, but the food I bought is enough to feed our family for the next three weeks (minus things that go bad or run out like bread and fruit). AND, included in that $92 was Lysol wipes (I actually ran out of something, baby bathing supplies (which I got great deals on), paper towels (Bounty, I'm to the point of wanting the good ones, the cheap ones stink) and toilet paper (Charmin, ditto the paper towel comment). I also bought a large bag of chicken and lots of stockpile items including bbq sauce, Miracle Whip, vegetables for our freezer, over $10 worth of fruit, soup, etc. My greatest deal, however, was on Ronzoni pasta. It is my pasta of choice anyway, because we eat the whole wheat or smart taste (also healthy) and now the healthy harvest. I'll just put it this way... I bought twelve boxes of pasta and they paid me to take it home. Here's how:
I went here and printed the coupons for all of the pasta except the quick cook (I know our Kroger doesn't keep that kind). Remember to hit your browsers back button to print the coupons twice! With the mega event that is going on these boxes of pasta come to .49 each, meaning that your $1 off of 2 coupons end up paying you .01 for each box of pasta you buy. I bought twelve so I had .12 of overage to use on other groceries! And this pasta stays good for a long time. It won't expire before I use it all, and I probably won't have to buy pasta for the rest of the year.
I ended up buying 30 mega event items, saving $15 in my order. I saved $64 with my Kroger plus card, another $30 with coupons and the rest was in bonus coupons savings. AND I received $3 off my next order! Woo hoo!
So there you go - and I have 3 minutes left before more than likely, the intruder will be back... I'm already exhausted, just thinking about it... *sigh*. Help moms!
-A
Ahhh, I wish we had Krogers down here! But for whatever reason we don't, and the closest ones are in Texas. Boo.
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain on the sleep issues. My oldest was a horrible cat napper. He took 30 minute mini naps until he was 5 months old or so? It was EXHAUSTING. He never slept near as much as other newborns I knew. He finally grew into a good routine, and we did the CIO method once he was older. I always nursed him to sleep, though.
Now, my daughter, she's a whole 'nother story. She slept wonderful the first 2 or 3 months. Napped several times, etc. Then she wouldn't go down for night time, and I ended up letting her CIO long(ish) periods of time at a young age. Simply because I knew she was being a stinker. It took a few weeks, but now she goes down at night without a fuss. I have to catch her really soon into her signs of showing tiredness, though, or she has meltdowns. We're still working on learning how to go back to sleep in the middle of the night, she seems to be slowly catching on.
As for her naps, I've noticed she's getting that 45 minute intruder during morning naps. For whatever reason my kids have been waking up at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning and the 6 month old is ready to go back to sleep at 8:30, that throws our whole morning off, because she's up at 9:30'ish and can't make it to the afternoon nap I like her to take around 1:30 or 2 p.m. (I do my absolute best to have both kids napping in the afternoon at the same time, for my sanity!) I just really hope she keeps two naps for a long time, I think my son was taking 3 at her age, but he took two until he was 20 months old or so, and it was sooo wonderful!
I do make my daughter lay in there and keep herself company if she wakes up too early from a nap. Teaches her to play by herself/self soothe, and keep herself company. That was something my oldest was (and sort of still is!) incapable of. If he's awake, by golly, you'd better be too! Now, of course, if she's just screaming bloody murder I go get her and just do my best to keep her awake until afternoon nap, come hell or high water. ;)
Now, I'm sure none of that was much help! Ha! I don't have a problem with CIO, but it definitely varies by child. I read this girls blog (hoperoadblog.com) and she just posted about a gentle sleep training book she's been reading in preparation for her 2nd. It's only $10 on Amazon, so I'm thinking about checking it out just for some ideas myself.
That was totally helpful! Ansley actually BEAT the intruder this morning! I saw her on the monitor wake up (at exactly 45 minutes), look around for a little bit, and eventually put herself back to sleep. No real crying either! And when she woke up at the 1 hour, 45 minute mark, she woke up HAPPY! She's down again so we'll see how this afternoon nap works!
ReplyDeleteAnd it sounds like our girls are doing the same kind of thing! She's up and raring to go at about 6 or 6:30... so I get her to sleep again on my chest (I know, awful isn't it?), and we're up up at about 7:15 or 7:30. She's ready to go back down between 8:30 or 9 after that. So when she only sleeps until 9:30 or 9:45 it totally messes up the rest of the day. Today she slept until about 11:30 (and she went down at about 9:15) and she went down again at 1:30, peeerfect timing for the afternoon nap being the same time as Bryton's! Bliss!
CIO with her isn't near as bad as it was with Bryton. In fact, I don't even know if I really consider it CIO... I guess it is, because she does cry, but she soothes pretty quickly usually and within ten minutes on a normal day she's out. Bryton on the other hand, when we finally tried it with him during his one middle of the night feeding when he was 7 months old, cried for over an hour... and this girl doesn't have it in her to listen to him scream for that long. Ugh! He finally figured himself out at about 8 months. So you are soooo right about it varying by child!
Thanks for the advice! Makes me at least feel like I'm not the only one out there trying to figure out their kids ;)
you are sooo not alone! i had that with both of mine at the same time! you ARE doing the right thing, have no doubt:) mine started sleeping for 12 hours on their own by 4 months and still to this day can do that. we did have to put them in seperate rooms though and completely black out the sunlight. we put cheap fleece throws up and that helped tons! they nap great, too but only at our house in their own bed...they can't stay the night with anyone else because they dont know how to sleep in the same room or in a room with any light whatsoever. it was worth it for us, though and we would both do it again! it still is hard for me to hear them cry but will is great about reminding me that they are better off going back to sleep on their own and that it is my responsibility to teach them to sleep well:) whether thats true or not it helps me to hear it!
ReplyDeleterachel k