My daughter Clara is about 4 weeks old and I am having some sleep issues with her. For the first week or so, we could only get her to sleep in her car seat or bouncy chair. But now we have gotten her to sleep in her crib too. However, not always. For the most part, I nurse her and then put her to sleep in her crib after swaddling her. She seems to like the swaddling and that is what helped her to sleep in her crib in the first place. For about the first week of us swaddling her she pretty much went back down every time after I fed her and didn't wake back up for a couple hours. But now every other time (some nights every time) she wakes back up within a few minutes or so of me putting her down. And I know that part of the problem is me nursing her to sleep or sometimes rocking her to sleep and then when she wakes up she can't put herself back to sleep. I want to know how to break her of this. I know I did it with my first daughter but don't remember how and I don't want to keep putting her to sleep this way or she'll really get used to it and it will be even harder to break. Also, I have tried finding a sleep method online that will work for her, but it seems like they all want you to wait until the baby is older...like 3-4 months or so...but what can I do until then? Go crazy??? This morning I resorted to driving her around in the car a little until she went to sleep because she wouldn't stay down to nap and she was really tired. Also, is it too early to try to implement a loose schedule? I'd like people's opinions on this too. Thanks for all your help!!
I used the Baby Wise method LOOSELY. Basically I just cycled through Eat - Play - Sleep. But he emphasise that order. Eat first, then play, then sleep. He is much more rigid about times and such than I wanted to be.
Also, you could try a white noise machine - it worked wonders for us.
I let my son lead me. for the first 4 weeks he had to be held to sleep. which led to me co sleeping until he was 2 months old. after that he started to sleep a few hours in the crib and few hours with me. by 3 months he slept only in his crib but from 3-7 months he woke every 2 hours sometimes every hour. though i was tired i embraced it and enjoyed the time with him. at 7 months old he started sleeping 12 hours straight and i got the break i had been needing. i do not regret any of the choices i made with him. i was worried at first because it seemed that every mom was telling me what i should and shouldn't do. i finely looked at my baby and said "we can do this you and i no one else matters" from that moment on we did what worked for us and didn't pay any mind to what we were "supposed" to do. it all worked out in a few short months. In my opinion i say you should do what works for your daughter. If she needs to be rocked or nursed to sleep then don't feel bad doing it! my son nursed to sleep until he was 4 months old. then it was only a few nights of 10 mins of crying before he fell asleep on his own. You wont "ruin" her. my son is amazing at night and i never did any real sleep training. Good luck i know how stressful it can be. They grow so fast that you will miss this part in a few years.
Read Dr. Sears Night Time Parenting, or go to askdrsears.com Sears has never failed us and saved our lives when we had our first baby!
Enjoy this time, the days (or in this case, the nights) are long, but the years are short.
J.
Something that helped me in my younger son's "worst" times of not sleeping during the day was wearing him in the Kangaroo Korner adjustable pouch. He would sleep for 2-3 hours in there. Sometimes those long stretches are what you both need to get on track (sleep begets sleep). I would wear him an hour or two and wake him up. It at least allowed me to check e-mail, talk on the phone, etc. w/ free arms.
I think it's too early to worry about a schedule, but I totally understand the panic you feel thinking she'll never sleep. She will! If she wakes right up, pick her up and start all over (it sux, I know). At that young age, she should be beginning to get tired after about 1 1/2 hour of being awake. Sleep - feed - change diaper - sleep- (repeat in the order that works best for you). Try a pacifier. Maybe it's the sucking she needs. My breastfed son still uses it to fall asleep (9 months old) and he sleeps all night now but didn't for a long time due to reflux/colic.
Good luck. I think you should keep up the swaddling for sure.
2 books helped us tremendously..."happiest Baby on the Block" - Dr. Harvey Karp - this has a DVD too for the "quick tour"....was great while they are under 4 months.....then we switch to "healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Dr. Marc Weissbluth....we are in the process of doing a graduated extinction cry it out method now that he is nearly 6 months. He goes to bed between 6:30 -7:30 each noght, but still nurses at 11:00 and 4 am, and starts the day around 7 am.
In those first 4 months, swaddling helped a ton, so did his swing ( yes he slept in it for naps on high speed) and white noise and room darkening curtains.........he slept in the crib at night and we swaddled him before nursing, and then the swaddle makes them feel like you are still holding them snug as you lay them down.
good luck
Jessie
I don't think it is too early to start implementing a schedule -- but it is too early for sleep training.
We started with a bedtime schedule when our son was around 4 weeks old. By 6 weeks we had the routine down (bath, bottle, rocking & bed) and he would go down pretty good around 7pm and sleep until around 2-3pm then wake up for a bottle and go right back down until 6-7:30am.
The big key is consistancy and PATIENTS. This won't happen overnight and there may be times where you have to lay Clara down several times (picking her up to rock her as needed) before she finally settles. I remember it taking as long as an hour some nights.
Good luck. And remember, this stage won't last forever.
My daughter is 5 months now and we had a similar problem with her when she was that age. She just wanted to be held while she slept and if we didn’t hold her she would get over tired and then she would refuse to sleep at all. We found that if we rocked her for 15 or 20 minutes after she fell asleep in our arms then she would be so sound asleep that she would not wake when we laid her down. The swing worked great too…we let her fall asleep and swing for a half hour then we could move her to her crib. I got a lot of flack for this because everyone said that she was learning bad habits but now that she is 5 months I have started to work on putting her down slightly wake at night and she is doing just fine. I have only been doing this for a week and she cries for a few minutes and then she is asleep and sleeps though the night. I figure in a week or so she wont even cry anymore since it gets less and less each night. I have been reading the "how to get your baby to sleep through the night book." I don't remember who it is by but it is really helpful. The key thing to remember is up until 3 months you really can't spoil her. Do what feels right for you.
Hi, my 2nd son is going to be 6 weeks on Friday... so I am right there with you on all of this.
Here is what I think... now that your daughter is a bit older, she may not need to go to sleep directly after eating (it depends on your schedule somewhat). Those early weeks they just eat and go immediately back to sleep. Now that she's 4 weeks, she'll start to be somewhat more wakeful, and somewhat harder to get back to sleep. Like another poster said, she probably can only stay away for 1 to 1.5 hours at this point before needing to go back to sleep. You need to watch her cues. When she starts to yawn or fuss, even if she's just been fed and has a fresh diaper, you need to start soothing her for sleep. I follow the Healthy Sleep, Healthy Child book by Weissbluth and I strongly believe in his suggestion to put the baby to sleep drowsy but awake. This requires a lot of effort on the part of the mom (or dad) but in the end will result in a baby who sleeps well. For my son, that means I swaddle him, rock him a bit til his eyes get heavy, and then put him in his crib or bassinet. Sometimes I also put my hand on his chest and wiggle it a bit to continue the rocking sensation in the crib. Then I leave. Sometimes he falls asleep and sometimes he wakes up. If he wakes up, I go back and try again.
I think 4 weeks is a little young for a schedule... Now that my son is approaching 6, I am starting to see one emerge for him, but it's not 100% there yet.... by 8 weeks I expect it will emerge more strongly. good luck. Hope this helps.
We also LOOSELY used the Baby Wise method of Eat--Play--Sleep. It worked great for us and resolved those falling asleep moments when baby hasn't eaten enough and wakes up too soon. Check it out and use what works for you! Good luck and hang in there!
My son would also only sleep in his car seat or bouncy chair (or being held upright or partially upright by someone). All the doctors thought it was acid reflux, but it turned out it was lactose intolerance.
Could it be reflux? She sleeps good in a carseat (she is propped up) .. but wakes when you lie her flat in the crib. My reflux babies (yes I had two) both slept in their carseats or on a wedge for their first 7-8 months of life... if they were flat they were in pain (and I didn't get any sleep). Look into the other posts about reflux and see if your baby is exhibiting the symptoms.
If it turns out you need her/him to sleep so you can get stuff done.. just wear the baby in a Bjorn. Its a must for a second baby and is a huge lifesaver!
mom this is common and normal. completely age appropriate for your little girl.
www.askdrsears.com is a good resource. you never want to use the cry it out method on any baby under the age of a year (or abouts; you will notice a difference in cry when they are old enough to 'wait' a bit)
elizabeth pantley has a GREAT sleep book, as does william and martha sears. the latter had 8 children of their own, so they know their stuff. :D
just trust your mommy instincts! there is NOTHING wrong with nursing her to sleep at this point. dont let ANYONE tell you otherwise. wait a couple months, around 4 months elizabeth pantley talks about the 'pantley removal method' where you nurse and baby starts falling asleep, you break the suction, and remove her, and when she starts looking for it again, you give it back... what this does is eventually helps her learn to fall asleep without the nipple in her mouth... but NEVER refuse her the nursing or sucking, just remove it and give her a second to see if she can calm down on her own. you might be surprised how quickly it works.
but again, dont start trying to do that until around 4 months or so. check out elizabeth pantley's book. i forget the exact title, but its a pretty popular one.
other things that might help you: a white noise machine, or the cd that i bought "for crying out loud" that has 8 tracks of 9 minute white noises like a washer, car windsheild wipers, a noisy restaurant, and my son's favorite the vacuum! babies are used to a LOT of noise. my son required our vacuum running all night long in order to sleep :P we found that cd and it helped tremendously! :D
anyway. that might just be the thing right there is to get a white noise machine or some sort of white noise cd. :D its awesome. :D
http://attachmentparenting.org/blog/2009/08/13/adventures...
cosleeping (baby in same room) is a VERY good idea; prevents SIDS, and gives you the ability to get to baby at night before she gets so upset that she cant get back to sleep peacefully.
bedsharing is another safe and effective option. it worked so well for me, i cant imagine NOT doing it! :D after all, someday not so long from now, they will be grown and you will have to drag smiles, hugs and kisses out of them at all... :D
I have scanned your other responses, and you have gotten a lot of good advice. It seems to me that you are feeling like you are moving backward instead of forward in the area of sleep with this baby and you are afraid that you will continue to lose ground or "mess it up" or something. But the true picture is nothing like that. Like most things that our children grow and mature in, it is more of a jazzy, curvy, winding path than a gradual upward incline. Yes, your baby is sleeping very differently now than she did a couple of weeks ago (she's twice as old as she was then!) And she will sleep even differently in a month or so and it will continually change. But it can all be good if you just stay with her and flex with her habits so that they work with your life, too.
I don't think that the problem has anything to do with nursing her to sleep. I know that there are so many out there that say that is bad, but I have always just gone with the flow, often ending up nursing a baby to sleep and it has never caused me any problems. I would agree with those who say to make sure she is completely asleep before laying her down. My husband and I developed the floppy arm test on about baby number three. It has been a totally dependable test ever since (7 more babies). If you pick up the arm and it flops back down like a rag doll, then the baby will stay asleep after you lay it down.
I did not get the advice now available from so many popular books when I started out. But I feel like I got the best advice from my common-sense aunt when I asked her if it was good or bad to rock my baby to sleep. She said it was a choice that I had to make. If I want to rock him to sleep now, then I need to be ready to do that always. If I want teach him to sleep on his own, then I will be committing to that always. I love rocking the baby, so I chose that and have never looked back. After 20 years of rocking babies, I hope I have the privilege of doing it somehow for the next 20, too.
