STTN = sleep through the night
So Luke isn't as bad as some babies - he has managed a few 11-12 hour stretches and mostly wakes 1-2x/night at his worst 3x/night - he goes straight back to sleep after a feed BUT I'm whinging cos it's not fair!
He doesn't nurse to sleep.
He has regular naps with age appropriate wake times.
He has an early bedtime of 18h30.
He has a regular bedtime routine.
He breastfeeds 2-3 hourly during the day and has started solids.
He goes down for his 3 naps and bedtime awake and is able to self-soothe.
He sleeps in a sleep sac in a non-cluttered bed.
He always sleeps in his crib.
He doesn't have a pacifier.
He has white noise on at a sensible volume.
His room is dark and at a controlled temperature.
So, according to the books, he should be sleeping 12 hours a night without a feed or stirring!
His wakings are irregular so are likely hunger related. Luke is 6.5 months so probably going through another growth spurt - at 72cm he is desperately trying to out-grow all the other babies in Hong Kong!
I'm tired and as much as I love Luke and being a stay-at-home-mother, I would love some time off.
A breast-feeding baby, who is always growing, is not mad-keen on solids and won't take a bottle means a permanent need for Mummy!
I want my night out with the girls!!!
Any ideas ladies?
All babies are different. My first daughter never slept as much as she's "supposed" to. I remember when she was first born thinking "Aren't babies supposed to sleep more than this??" I thought everything I'd read about babies needing lots of sleep was misinformation or something, because my newborn was only needing about 12 hours of sleep every day (including naps). At 3 years now she is happy with about 9 hours at night and a 1 hour nap.
ReplyDeleteMy other daughter is a text-book sleeper :) She's 1 year old and she slept about 18 hours a day when she was first born and now she sleeps about 13-14 hours/day still. It's wonderful! So my conclusion is that...some kids just don't need as much sleep.
Something that we did for a while which was helpful was we hired a lady to come by and play with our daughters for a couple hours a week in their play room. If they needed me for nursing, then I was right there in the other room and could come take care of them, but mostly they were kept occupied and entertained, and I got a short break to nap, read, shower, work on my computer, spend time with my husband (if he was home) or just relax. It was nice.
(btw I found your blog at MamaJoJo4BooBoo)
I'd rather deal with this than work! LOL! Can we swap please?
ReplyDeleteLana was like Luke, but Maddy's a great sleeper. I have a theory (based on a sample size of TWO) that night-weaning helped my girls to sleep through the night better. With Lana when she woke, it was easy to put her on the breast and she'd be back asleep soon after. BUT she would wake and need it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT until she was 15 months old. When she was weaning, the LAST feed that she dropped was the middle of the night feed. And I started giving her water instead of milk - and as soon as she was completely weaned, she slept fantastically at night.
ReplyDeleteWith Maddy being bottle fed, when she wakes up, I roll over and think "Ahhh - I DON'T want to get out of my nice warm bed to warm a bottle, wait for 10 min in the cold kitchen, feed her for another 15 min and then struggle to get back to sleep" - so instead, I just would pat her, give her the dummy, do WHATEVER I could to delay needing to feed her. And she sleeps MUCH better than Lana did.
I have no idea whether my theory would work on other babies - if it did, I'm sure someone would have written a best-selling book about it by now (or maybe they already have and I didn't realise!) - and also I have no idea how I would night-wean a breastfed baby... but just thought I'd share my experience anyway!
I feel your pain and hope that Luke doesn't keep it up until he's 15 months old like Lana did!!!