For my first baby post, I figured I’d write about what is
the most relevant in my life right now! Babies and their sleeping habits.
Shout out to the past 25 years of my life where I had
precious sleep time! I was able to sleep in, wake up well-rested and even take
naps. Ahh naps … those hour (or two) durations of slumber that had you wake up
re-energized and ready to take on the rest of the day! I miss naps. Those don’t
happen for me anymore. And, I’m sure a lot of you moms know exactly what I’m
talking about. What’s funny is, when I first had my baby, everyone kept telling
me, “make sure you sleep while she sleeps!”.
I never understood how that was possible. If I slept while she slept, I’m
losing time to pump, house work, shower, fulfill religious duties (prayer), and
not to mention eat! But...Wait…I just realized I’m writing in the baby section,
not in the “about me” section…so let me get back to the baby part. Sorry for my
rant.
Okay… so back to babies and their sleeping habits. It took
me 8 and a half months (my daughter’s current) age to realize that infants, for
the most part, are never consistent with their sleep. I get days where my
daughter sleeps through the night, and days where she wakes up twice. And, I’ve
read so many blogs, and articles by experts that were meant to be how-to guides
on how to get your baby to sleep long and well, but truthfully, nothing worked
for me. I’m not saying my daughter doesn’t sleep well—she does. But, some days
are more predictable than others. For the most part, I am able to put her to
bed around 8:30 p.m., give her the pacifier, I leave the room and
she falls asleep on her own. Then, she’ll wake up 4 or 5 hours later and want a
bottle. At first, I figured she was waking up and eating out of habit because
she got used to me feeding her at night. However, sometimes when she finishes
the entire bottle, she cries when it runs out. So that leads me to believe that
she really is hungry when she wakes up! So, I don’t mind it. I feel bad letting
her go to bed hungry. So I feed her a bottle, and she goes right back to sleep
for a nice long stretch until around 8 or 9 a.m.
I truly believe that
every baby is different and there is no right or wrong way to teach your baby
to sleep. At around 4-5 months, I tried the “cry it out” method, which was pure
torture, but it didn’t work out for me. I tried for a week, and I realized that
I need to really know and understand my daughter’s personality. She would not
sleep when I let her cry it out. I think what worked best for me was routine. Every
night, I gave her a bath, fed her a bottle and put her in her crib. After a
while, I think she got the hang of it. But, she still gets many days-- like I said
before about inconsistency—where she doesn’t sleep well. Every month she goes
through a week that I call hell week. During this week she wakes up two-three times
a night and refuses to go back to sleep. Guess what that means? Mama doesn’t
sleep either!
So, for those of you moms who worry and wonder “WHAT AM I
DOING WRONG” or “WHY ISN’T MY KID SLEEPING?” don’t stress too much about it. Anyway,
if babies are full, clean and have burped, sometimes they may be teething, be going
through growth spurts, or want to move around as they begin the crawling
stages. Most Infants aren’t going to be consistent in their sleeping habits. Their
brains are developing so fast and there are so many factors that may be
preventing your baby from sleeping , well, like a baby. Now that I think about
that quote, “sleep like a baby” it really doesn’t make much sense—in my case at
least!
What are some of the methods you used to help your baby
sleep better?
M.
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