A sequel in the making

It seems there will be a sequel to my sleep training posts. Sirenita will be 5 months old next week, and is in full 4 month sleep regression. I've read that it may not "just go away" so I am putting together a plan to deal with it. For the past two weeks she has been waking more and more frequently at night. 1-2 times has been usual for months now. All the sudden she was waking 3, then 4, and now between 6 and 8 times a night.  The first time it happened I thought it was because she had just gotten vaccines (it was a long hard debate whether or not to vaccinate her, too.) and then she kept waking more frequently. She still naps just fine, and goes to sleep without a fuss, but I noticed she was having trouble staying asleep. Saturday I had that light bulb moment when I saw someone post in a mom's group that the four month sleep regression was kicking their butt. Oooh...

So we're in full swing now, waking up more often than she has since she was a newborn, and probably more than she did then. Mommy can't really handle that, and has come up with a plan. I've known for a while that she is about ready for night weaning. It's just  been more convenient for me not to do it than to listen to her cry at night. Time to put an end to that, I am not a Waffle House, open 24/7!  So, crossing my fingers and praying here, but hopefully the sequel on how I survived the 4 month regression will be available soon!

Mom stuff: My experience with sleep training Part 2 - Getting baby to sleep

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for… Part two of my experience with sleep training. When we last left off, I was able to get Sirenita to go back to sleep or not wake up all the way at night. That was a miracle that left me no longer sleep deprived, and a more or less happy mamma. Now there were two remaining obstacles that stood between me and a happy routine every day. First of all, it still took us two hours or more every night to get
 Sirenita to fall asleep. Walk, rock, lower, crap. Start over. Walk, rock, wander the house, pat her back, sing her songs… Once she fell asleep, she was out for the night (with the exception of her mostly asleep midnight snacks.) I had what I considered a “good routine” for the morning at the time – she would eat at about 8am, but otherwise sleep straight through till 10am. This enabled me to get stuff done.

 At about 8 weeks, Sirenita decided she no longer wanted to nap. She would only sleep in my arms during the day. She wouldn’t last more than 20 minutes asleep anywhere but in my arms. I could tell she was tired. She just couldn’t stay asleep, for some reason. I was frustrated, to say the least. Every 4th day or so she would sleep the entire day and wake up only to eat. Go figure. I researched, I talked to friends, family, her pediatrician (who gave me the depressing advice “Some babies just catnap like that”) and finally made some changes. Within 3 days we were able to get her to sleep within half an hour of our starting time. Within a week, we were on a working nap time schedule, with a bedtime and all. So… What did I do?

 1)Baby KISS Principle
 Remember this from my previous post? Keep it sleepy, stupid. I had been told that babies need to see the sun! Open the curtains, get their circadian rhythm in order, blah, blah, blah. Somewhere around 2 months, babies start to become increasingly aware of their surroundings. They notice the way the light dances through the leaves and casts shadows on the wall. They notice the contrast of the ceiling fan against the ceiling, the black and white stripes made by the grate over the heat vents. With so many amazing things to look at, they don’t really want to sleep, they want to take it all in. After all, there is so much more to look at than there was in the womb!

 If I were to tell you that you can take a nap at 2:30 on a week day, you’d be thrilled, right? And when I lead you to a fully lit room (to lay on a hard cot with no blankets or pillow, by the way) you may or may not be able to sleep. Now that baby is aware their surroundings, they may or may not be able to sleep either. They don’t know how to go to sleep like an adult does, so when the first sleep cycle ends at 20 minutes  or so (babies have shorter sleep cycles than adults) baby wakes up and doesn’t feel like going back to sleep, even though she needs it.  The solution is to close the blinds, close the curtains. Make it dim. It doesn’t need to be pitch black, it just needs to have a nice sleepy gloom to it.

 2) Observation 
After Christmas, I started tracking everything. Nap times, diaper changes, feedings. I realized that when I was trying to put Sirenita down for a nap she wasn’t actually sleepy half the time. This led to an angry, frustrated baby who rebelled by refusing to sleep during the day if she could at all help it. (If babies can go on nursing strikes, which Sirenita has done several times, why not nap strikes?)

I had read that when she starts to yawn, put her down for a nap. It worked wonders for a few weeks. Then boom! At two months, I found myself with an angry, awake yawning baby. As I observed Sirenita I found that she began to rub her eyes about half an hour after yawning, and then within 10 minutes of that got cranky. The eye-rubbing stage was still too early to put her down, but crankiness was my sign that it was time. When I observed her awake time from first 'get me up' cry to crankiness, I realized she could only stay awake and be happy for two hours at a time. After two hours, she morphed into an angry screamer.

 A word of caution about observation. My first error was in thinking that because for a few weeks Sirenita was sleepy at the yawning stage, that she would continue to be sleepy at that state. You have to learn your child, but be aware that they will change. Their nap time needs will change. Since I realized this, Sirenita’s naps have shortened by half an hour, but the transition was fluid and didn’t cause doom in our home. You have to keep observing, and realize that there will be changes in how long your child stays awake, and the signs that they’re getting sleepy. Don't assume that because there are exactly two hours of good wakeful time now that there will always be - or even that there will be later in the day.

 3) Bed is for sleeping
 A friend of mine mentioned to me that she only puts her child in bed to sleep. I hadn’t been leaving Sirenita in her bed for play time, but I did between diaper changes, or to run to the bathroom, grab something from the other room, etc. Sirenita's idea of bed was not “the place I sleep.” It was “the place mommy suddenly dumps me for five minutes when we had been having such a good time playing together.”

 I was given a ton of blankets and quilts for Sirenita. I thought I had more than I’d ever need. They are now my best friend. I keep one in each part of the house, ready to unfold and put on the floor. Sirenita plays on them when she is awake. She spends more time rolling around on a blanket on the floor than anywhere else. I put her somewhere where I can keep an eye on her, and make sure that there is nothing close enough for her to grab or knock over. Once I started leaving her on the floor, her hatred for her bed waned. Sometimes as we get closer to nap time, she will actually grab a favorite toy, cuddle it by her face and go to sleep on the floor. She no longer feels the need to rebel against sleep.

 3)Nap/sleep routine
 Ok… I hated hearing this from the people I asked. I thought I had tried a nap time routine, and it didn't work. I figured I'd have to wait a little and then let her cry it out.  Here’s the deal. When it comes to nap time routines, the grown up version of the “KISS” principle has to meet the baby version. Keep it simple, keep it sleepy.

I had tried several times to implement a nap time routine. I failed each time. It didn’t work. Why? Because I made it way too complicated and set myself up for failure. I had read the recommendations, a song, a snuggle, a book…. And I tried to do it all. Once I realize that I made my routine impossible, I changed it around. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do read to Sirenita every day. We usually do it while we roll around on the floor, though. I don’t need her to learn reading is sleepy, I want her to think it’s exciting. So every day I lay on my back on the floor beside her, or sit in a chair with her on my lap and read a book to her. But it’s not part of our bedtime routine because when she is tired it is pointless to read to her! 

Our bedtime routine consists of things we need to do. When I get her ready for a nap, the first thing I do is turn on the white noise. We only use this noise while she is asleep, so that signals that its time to relax. If it’s a particularly sunny day I’ll also half shut the blinds at this point. Then I feed her. A lot of times she falls asleep while she is eating because she is already tired and knows what is coming. If she doesn’t go to sleep, that’s ok too. Once she’s done, I put a sleep sack on her. (I used to swaddle her, but she is too active now.) I take her to the windows, and as I close the curtains I tell her it’s time for a nap. Then I sing a short song (Bella Notte from Lady and the Tramp is my favorite), I give her a kiss, tell her I love her, and put her in bed. Sometimes she looks at me, turns her head, and goes to sleep immediately. Sometimes she’ll cry a little. I quietly walk out and leave her there if she does. I tell myself to give her a chance to go to sleep, and if she starts screaming I’ll go get her and we’ll try later. We’ve never gotten to that point, because after a minute or two of crying she settles herself down and goes to sleep. It’s rare for her to cry, but it does happen. For the most part, this is a no-tears method.

At night we do the same thing. Her bedtime routine is initiated by a bath at the same time every night. Once she is in her PJs, we turn on the white noise and follow the same routine. Within about 3 days Sirenita was used to her routine, and it became successively easier to get her to sleep. I will warn you that cuddling changes once you have a bedtime routine. Sometimes I just want to cuddle my sleeping baby. Usually my sleepy baby is waiting for me to put her into bed so she can go to sleep. In the beginning, I tried cuddling her to sleep a few times, and she cried till I put her in bed. *Sigh* So independent at 4 months! As we get closer to 5 months, however, she is developing her own personality and cuddles in her own way when she wants to. I'll spare you a detailed description of her adorable cuddlyness, and just assure you that there are still cuddles to come.

 4) Set a schedule 
 Once you’ve observed your child enough to know how long they stay awake, and hopefully how long they typically sleep, set a schedule. We’ve all been told “Don’t wake a sleeping baby.” I think that was one of my biggest errors. I was letting Sirenita sleep till 10am, then sleep all day if she wanted. Once I knew how long she needed to be awake, I was able to get her to sleep when she was ready. That made it easy to figure out how long she needed to sleep, since she would typically sleep the same amount of time. From there, it was a matter of figuring out when to get her up in the morning. As much as I enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning, I realized that there was no good schedule that allowed Sirenita to sleep till 10. Instead, I wake her up at 8 every morning. That sets the stage for our whole day. Just like adults get “programmed” to wake or get tired at the same time daily, babies will too. The key to keeping the schedule isn’t so much as knowing when nap time begins as knowing when it needs to end. I typically Sirenita gets up at 8am, sleeps 10:30-1pm, 3-5 and goes to bed at 7:30 – but the key is not to let her oversleep. It’s ok if it happens occasionally, but I try to follow the wake up schedule as much as possible to keep her on it. On of the best things that happens with a schedule is that she usually doesn't cry when going to bed or waking up. She may lay there and squeal for a while, but she doesn't often cry.

After just a few weeks, Sirenita was so used to her schedule that even if we were out she would (and still does) fall asleep at nap time, and all because I woke her up at strategic times. I kind of worked backwards here, but it works. With a good nap schedule, even if baby doesn’t get to bed “on time,” or misses all their naps and goes to bed late a day or two a week, it won’t “mess them up.” More likely, if you’re consistent baby will take it upon themselves to nap at the appropriate times regardless of location.

 These are kind of a freebies, but I have found that Sirenita is happier if I wake her up right. Typically I hear her start squealing within five minutes of the end of nap time. If she doesn’t, and she is still asleep I have found that if I go wake her by standing beside her bed, calling her name, touching her, etc, she wakes up making the saddest face ever and cries the first few minutes. I have a “wake up” routine too, because it helps her wake up on her own instead of cruel mommy waking her up.

I walk in, open the curtains so the light comes in, or if it’s particularly gloomy, I turn the light on, and I shut off the white noise. That’s it. Usually that’s enough to make her start stretching and waking up on her own. If not, I’ll rattle around the room for a few minutes. Open and shut drawers, walk around and do my own little things (Quietly! No need to scare them awake!), and just the additional sounds help wake her up. Once she has stretched, and rolled around and opened her eyes on her own, I go to her bed and start talking to her. I usually get a smile at that point and she is ready to get up.

 Last comments on schedule… If Sirenita wakes during her nap, I try to leave her down even if she cries. I find that she typically wakes up about half way through, cries for a minute or two, and then settles back to sleep even better. If I get her up at that halfway point, I’m cheating her out of the best part of the nap. It’s hard sometimes, but I listen for the intensity of the cry. I think we probably all learn our baby’s cries. Sirenita has a cry, and then a scream. If she is crying, I leave her down. She’ll go back to sleep within a few minutes. If it escalates to a scream, the nap is definitely over. She usually doesn’t cry or scream at the end of her nap at all. I think she realizes that usually mommy comes in just as she is waking up.

 5) Consistency
Above all… Consistency is key. More for you than for baby. Make your routine something you do anyway, and do it in the same order. Keep an eye on the clock. It’s hard to bring yourself to wake a sleeping baby, but they will be happier if you do! We all know that a happy baby makes for happy family.

There you have it, my two cents on sleep training. That’s how we did it. And that being said, it is now 12:59, and I hear Sirenita starting to wake up in the bedroom. I hope this is helpful to someone, because it’s a wonderful thing to have a nap time schedule and not fight to get baby to sleep. We were able to do scheduled naps by 3 months, and have a strong enough routine that we haven't been terribly affected by the "4 month regression." Good luck!

What a week!

I had some technical difficulties last week, and I wasn't able to post! My phone had been running on the pace of dial up internet, so I complained to the Accountant. He, being our technology guru, did some magic which fixed my phone's wifi access, but caused IP conflicts with my computer. I'm known for awkward swipe text errors, so I'm afraid there is no blogging from my phone. We're back up and running now, and will be posting very very soon! Meanwhile, here's a peak at what I've been working on this week.

Sirenita is starting to sit up on her own for short periods of time, so I made use of my time this week to make a cart cover. I'd post the tutorial I used, but honestly... Ugg. We won't go there. I didn't care for it. It was extremely frustrating, so I am plotting to create one of my own. I also get tons of compliments on my carseat cover, so I'll draw that up and get it on here too. I made an "Anywhere chair" found here. It's very easy to make, I can't wait to try it out! I will say that it didn't work on my dinning room chairs, they are too wide and don't have a middle bar. I made an extender strap, so hopefully that will help in such cases. I also added a tiny piece of velcro to mine so I can roll it up neatly and put it in the diaper bag. The Accountant had a pair of batman PJs pants that shrunk, and for years I've been telling him that I will turn them into shorts and make a pair of pjs for the baby we will someday have. Soo... There are the PJs! I made the shirt based off of this tutorial, and the bottoms I just used a pair of PJ pants as a pattern. Long ago I used to make doll clothes all the time, and Pants were super easy so I don't need much pattern for that! As for the dresses... I'm plotting a super cute outfit for Sirenita for Easter. A dress, diaper cover, shoes, a bow.... The works. I bought the fabric, found an example of a dress I want to make, and now I'm practicing to get it just right! These are actually super easy, thanks to this keyhole tutorial (which may not still be there - I'm getting a cox error message trying to add the direct link) and her awesome tutorial for lined bodices. I still haven't found a skirt that I like or decided on the rest of the dress style, but these are so cute and easy to make I may add them to my Etsy store, Sweet Sirenita!

Mom stuff: My experience with sleep training Part 1

Like every mom to be, I dreamed of having a child who peacefully closed their eyes and slipped into an angelic slumber of at least several hours at a time from the first day of their birth. Or better yet, one of those magical babies that sleep through the night the day they come home from the hospital. The first night, even there in the hospital, my daughter woke up every twenty minutes. She would nurse for roughly two minutes, fall asleep while nursing, and be awake and screaming again twenty minutes later. All. Night. Long.

No, my daughter is not one of those magical babies. Honestly, I think babies who sleep through the night are really changelings left by faeries or leprechauns. My daughter has still never slept all the way through the night. We got pretty close once, I think she woke up at 5 am and I was pretty excited. Four months in, I am not sleep deprived. I love to sleep, I get pretty grumpy if I don't get enough, but the fact that Sirenita still has night time feedings isn't a big deal, because there is no fuss to the feedings.

I'm not going to pretend that I have it all together and can give you the magic spell to make your baby sleep (or the phone number for the leprechauns who change babies for sleeping changelings). It has been a journey to get here, but my little Sirenita sleeps like a teenager now. (I'd say "like a baby" but whoever used that to say that someone sleeps well must never have had children.)  I do, however, feel that every parent is intitled to the same help that I scrapped together from dozens of sources.

1)White Noise
Our first week home, my husband and I were up and down all night. Change, feed, soothe, rock, slowly lower, aaaaand.... blast, she's awake. Repeat. The Accountant hadn't been at his job long enough to have paternity leave. I learned pretty quick that at that point there wasn't much he could do when she woke up at night, it was me she needed. Mama the milk machine. So then it was just me, up and down all night.

I spent two horrible, miserable nights in the nursery, walking, singing every song I knew out of desperation, nursing... Me, the boppy, and the baby. She wouldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Shortly before day break, as the birds began to sing, she would fall asleep. Oh, the desperation. I felt depressed even walking down the hall towards the nursery that I had so carefully and lovingly designed. I dreaded bedtime. At night, we would get Sirenita to sleep, and within 10 minutes of our shutting off the lights and crawling into bed she would be screaming like a banshee. We tried everything we knew to get her back to sleep. Nothing worked. Enter hours of sleeplessness. One night, The Accountant was so frustrated he walked into the living room and began to play the piano, while I continued to pace the bedroom with our beet red banshee baby screaming her lungs out.

 We have vaulted ceilings, open concept, and wood floor under the piano. When you play piano in our living room, the entire house fills with music. As soon as he started to play, Sirenita calmed down and went to sleep in my arms.  I remember praying for God to show us what to do, not one of those pious, "Oh, thou mighty God, grant me the ability to..." prayers. It was more like a desperate cry for help. Suddenly, I had a "light bulb" moment. She seemed to be terrified of the dark and silence.

All day long we rattled around making noise like we'd been told. Vacuum around her, so she can sleep through anything, they said. Make noise, so you won't have to tip toe around her. No one told us that babies need noise. When The Accountant finished playing piano, Sirenita was asleep in her bed.
We turned on a small lamp, and played instrumental music all night long. I really hated the instrumental music. I felt like I was sleeping in an elevator with the light and music. But Sirenita went to sleep, and began to sleep for 2 or 3 hours at a time.

I did some research. I found out that the noise a baby experiences in the mother's womb is as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Silence, therefore, is a terrifying thing to them. If you want to sleep well at night, baby needs to know there is still a world out there. We slept with instrumental music on for a few weeks till I saw something that recommended White Noise. I ended up looking up white noise on YouTube. We used Ocean sounds, waterfall, rain, vacuum, fan, blow drier... Use what works for you. I switched it up for a while there, till the Accountant downloaded an 8 hour loop of rain. The first night we used it Sirenita slept for 6 hours straight.

I don't recommend music, though you can use it if you want. We realized that the differences in tones, the fast and slow songs, the few seconds between the songs, etc, caused her to wake up more frequently than constant white noise did. Certain songs seemed to wake her up more than others... So now they make me think of 4 AM. Ugg. We also downloaded a free white noise app that we would use on our cellphones to calm her when we were out. White noise is amazing.

2) The Baby K.I.S.S. principle 
You may have heard of the "K.I.S.S." principle - keep it simple stupid. The baby version is slightly different. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Sleepy Stupid.

Once we moved our bedroom into the elevator, Sirenita began to sleep for two hours, sometimes 3 hours at a shot. The problem now was getting her back to sleep when she woke up. Each time she woke up, I would change her diaper prior to feeding her, then have to spend an hour or two getting her back to sleep. Ugg. No bueno.  I had read to always change the diaper prior to feeding, so that baby is ready to go back down if they fall asleep eating. We had been living in the elevator for several weeks when I got fed up with my reverse naps - being up 2 hours at a shot several times a night. I started looking into how to get Sirenita to sleep better. The recommendations I found were revolutionary to me. Life changing. And made so much sense. Don't wake baby.

Imagine that you are asleep. You wake up at 3am and are hungry. So you get up, turn on all the lights, chat with some people around you, go to the bathroom, listen to some music, take a shower, and finally, have a snack and go back to bed. Are you sleepy? Maybe. Doubtful. You're probably wide awake.

So why do we expect different from our infants? Sirenita cried because she was hungry. I would get up, change her diaper in the full light of the LED lamp we left on for her, talk to her, unswaddle her, feed her, reswaddle her, and hope she went back to sleep. Obviously, it didn't work. I was ruining her sleepiness.  Until I found those revolutionary techniques. Keep it as sleepy as possible.  Here are some "Don'ts" for those late night feedings.

Don't change the diaper unless absolutely necessary.
As terrible as I felt at first, this really helped. I went from four changers at night to maybe two. This may or may not work on a newborn, they tend to poop more often. But by the time Sirenita was 6 weeks old, we were down to one, or sometimes no diaper change at night. That's considering night as 10 or 11pm to 6am. I felt like a monster at first. But then, if I had one of those sleep through the night changeling babies, I sure wouldn't have been waking it to change it's diaper in the middle of the night.

Don't turn on the lights!
I don't like sleeping with a light on. Turns out it was unnecessary for Sirenita, as well. We quickly moved to a night light instead of a full lamp. (That was miraculous!) We can see to change her if need be, to pick her up.. Basically to do whatever we need to, but it's not like sleeping with the light of day.  A night light is more than sufficient. We have a little LED light that can be pointed in whatever direction you want, and it's got a sensor on it so it comes on as it gets dark.

Don't talk to the baby.
Oh, so incredibly mean! Don't talk to that sweet baby at 4am? Monster!
It took me a while to get used to this one. Even though I didn't particularly want to speak at 4am, I was used to "hush," "It's ok," or singing a song. The effect of speaking to a baby at 4am is like holding a conversation at 4am; It wakes you up. Ever slept in the same room with someone who talks in their sleep? They aren't even awake and it wakes you up. Sometimes it scares the snot out of you and takes forever to get back to sleep. Don't talk to the baby if you want them to go back to sleep quickly. Don't sing lullabies at 4am. They don't need it. They don't need their entire nap/bed time routine again, either.

Don't look baby in the eyes.
We called this the "Medusa baby" stage. Don't look her in the eye or she will turn you into stone - or worse yet, not go to sleep! This seemed strange to me, at first, but I understand it better now that Sirenita is older. When you look a drowsy baby in the eye, they get excited to see what you are going to say or do. My daughter absolutely loves eye contact. I know that if Sirenita is laying in bed, going to sleep and I happen to catch her eye, she lights up, smiles, and goodbye drowsiness! We have to start from scratch.

 I remember my sister saying, "but what about the affirmation they need?!" It's ok.
 Baby gets lots of affirmation during the day. That's the time for eye contact. Not at 4am. It felt really mean at first, but within a few days Sirenita learned she didn't have to fully wake up for feedings at night. She cries but generally doesn't open her eyes unless I leave her cry for a long time. So long as I hear her and get her before she reaches a frensied banshee pitch, she doesn't open her eyes during night feedings. Seems she doesn't want to wake in the middle of the night any more than I do. I have noticed during the day sometimes she wants to catch my eye while she's eating before a nap, and as soon as she does she will go to sleep. There's the affirmation she needed.

I read a recommendation that you look at the baby's belly, so you can keep an eye on them without catching the Medusa gaze. Sirenita learned fast, so it wasn't too much of an issue with us.

If you're nursing, here's one more that may help. Learn to feed baby while laying down.
I started doing this because I had an issue with an over supply of milk, which sounds good, unless you've ever had to deal with an angry baby on a nursing strike because they're being drowned in milk! The best position for Sirenita was a side laying position. That helped the whole sleepy feel - especially for me! I don't have to worry about falling asleep in the middle of the night and dropping her. When I feed her on the outside of the bed I wedge pillows up as a barrier so there is no way she could fall out, but I generally wake up if she moves anyhow.  I have found the "vibes" I give off affect my daughter hugely... Especially if I'm nursing her. If I'm in a hurry, she doesn't go to sleep. If I am tense because I'm trying to stay awake, it inhibits her sleepiness. If I lay down beside her, close my eyes and breathe deeply, she will relax and go to sleep.

That is how I get my daughter back to sleep at night. We haven't had problems getting back to sleep since she was 6 weeks old or so. I'll be posting soon about no hassle bed/nap times, and how we get Sirenita to sleep without a fuss at four months old. I will say this now... Although I don't have anything against the "cry it out" strategy, I didn't have to use it. Stay tuned for part 2, and remember, White Noise, and baby KISS!