Losing My Sh*t: One Month

My almost-6-month old baby slept almost three hours during this morning's nap!

Holy cow!

It's working... it's really working! Schedules are a marvelous thing.

Yo-tan got thrown off a bit the past two weeks. He caught a cold (runny nose, cough that developed briefly into croup, extra spit-up/throw up) and that really messed with his sleep. He's also right in the midst of a developmental leap (Wonder Weeks #23-26), so that also messed with naps, but really more so with his nighttime sleep. There's also a small possibility he is teething. He has been gnawing on things incessantly lately, including my finger and my face (always entertaining), and his older brother's first two teeth came in at 6-6.5 months. Lastly, we traveled a bit for the weekend, visiting my in-laws and sleeping at their house Friday night through Sunday morning. WHEW!

But even with all that working against us, we have still been getting better with each passing week. Two weeks ago, I decided that it was just about time to help him graduate from the 90-minute nap method and make the switch from three daily naps to two (six months of age is approximately when that happens). Based on his current sleep cycle, 10am and 2pm seemed to be optimal. Some days work better than others and, logically, as he gets older, it's working better (like today, for example).

Don't get me wrong. We still have thirty minute naps (our second nap today was exactly that long), but I usually get at least one long nap from him daily. He's also gotten much better at falling asleep by himself. This is most likely due to my getting better at not quite nursing him to sleep. Well.... let me explain. When he's ridiculously tired, he'll fall asleep nursing, but before I put him down, I will unlatch him (or he'll now unlatch himself 70% of the time) and pat him on my shoulder before putting him in his crib. He almost always burps, shifts, and rearranges himself on his mattress. He does sort of wake up... whatever it is, it works for us.

Even in the middle of the night, when he wakes up, he doesn't always cry immediately. At times, he will chatter and squeak to himself as he exercises. I'll wake up, listen, and fall in and out of sleep until he decides what he wants to do.

Last night he finally felt better physically (the few nights before were miserable; he was waking up at least every two hours). But last night, Yo-tan only woke up twice (once at 3am, though that might have been due to a power outage which caused the A/C to turn off and the room to heat up), the second time being at 4:35am. Both times he stayed up for at least 20-25 minutes - ugh. He was practicing lifting his body off the mattress.

For some reason, he thinks that 3/4am is the perfect time to practice the precursor to crawling. I don't know why... maybe because it's quiet and no one pesters him to sit, stand, or look cute for the camera.

Whatever the reason, he finally passed out again and slept until 7:40am - in his own bed! It felt wonderful.

I am still putting him to sleep earlier than I did his brother (Yo-tan falls asleep, on average, around 5:45-6pm; his brother used to go to sleep about an hour later), but hey, I'd totally be okay with him waking up around 6:30am-7am. As such, I've been trying to push the baby's bedtime a bit, but he's just not ready for it quite yet, probably due to those annoying thirty minute naps.

Another bonus? His moods! He's a much happier baby... Of course he is; He's sleeping more and is less tired during the day. He smiles even more than he did before and plays/sits/does everything better. His joy is my joy and we both smile and are happier people than we were a month ago.

His original nighttime sleep stretches have gotten increasingly longer as well... he's consistently been giving us 4-4.5, then 5 hours before waking up (which is nice since we'd like to actually go on a date soon without worrying that he'll wake up before our return).

So far, he fell asleep tonight around 6:15pm. It's now 12:20am. Of course I'm getting a little nervous and keep checking the monitor to make sure he's breathing, but all seems well and quiet on the home front.

Yes. Schedules are a marvelous thing.



(Note: he woke up briefly five minutes later and only twice again all night!)

Losing My Sh*t: Mid-week Update!

I was expecting to next write about our Adventures in Sleep Training in another three days, but today was so awesome that I had to give a mid-week update.

Baby Yo-tan woke up this morning around 7:40am (I believe), later than usual (by about an hour), which was nice considering how lousy he had slept last night. He was too cold, which has always been trouble for him, and even as he slept, he kept moving around. Like I said previously, he's been going through a spurt lately and it's been giving him trouble. He's also a little under the weather, poor fellow.

Anyhoo, he was getting quite tired and I started to doubt whether he had woken up at 6:40 or 7:40am, and honestly, I can't recall. Either way, I decided to try to put him for a nap around 10:00am. I've been debating for the last few days how I want to handle his nap times now that he's approaching six months of age. You see, according to my handy-dandy Elizabeth Pantley sleep training book, at about six months of age, babies should have two naps totaling 3-4 hours during the day (one in the late morning, one in mid-afternoon). Prior to being six months old, they should have three naps of at least that much. My husband and I almost burst out laughing at that one... 

But seriously, being that he's 5.5 months now, I realized that he is going to be consolidating what little sleep he gets during his naps into two naps and I'd better get with the proverbial program. So I decided that 10:00am and 2:00pm were good times based on when he wakes up in the morning and when he goes to sleep (we start the bedtime process around 5:30pm, way earlier than with kid #1). Of course, that's assuming that he actually would sleep more than 30 minutes per nap. I thought this might be ... interesting.

I didn't start this "two nap" thing 2.5 weeks ago because he was only five months old and because of his mini naps, but being that I've had a bit of success up until now, I figured today was as good a day as any.

Around 10am, I took him into our room, read him a couple poems from our sleep book, nursed him from both sides (he now unlatches by himself when done), and burped him on my shoulder. I placed him in the bed and he passed out at 10:05am. I didn't count on anything but a half hour nap, as usual.

Yo-tan woke up at noon!!!

What?! Yes, you heard me right. NOON. I kept checking the monitor, expecting to see him stirring, but nope! An almost two hour nap. LOVED IT.

He cried as he awoke, but I think maybe he wasn't feeling great. I gave him lots of hugs and love and he calmed down, back to his happy, chubby, little self.

Around 1:40pm, he started getting a little tired, and though maybe I shouldn't have pushed it, I cuddled him until 1:55pm. We went back to our room, read a couple poems, nursed, and burped. He was sleeping already for ten minutes, but woke up when I placed him in the crib. I did my 5/1, but he fell asleep again but woke up again when put down... the third time I went in, I told my husband, "maybe third time is the charm," but I had truly figured my day's good luck had run out.

I nursed him, burped him, and put him back into bed, patting his tush and shushing him. He finally fell asleep (again) at 2:44pm, and again, I was counting only on a half-hour, especially because he was overtired.

He stirred a half hour into his nap and was uneasy for another forty minutes before he woke up at 3:54pm. Another hour+ nap! Unheard of.

He was a cranky boy again so he got more cuddles, but became very tired, very quickly. I started getting him ready for bed at 5:30pm. I read him his poetry* (now he wants to eat the book along with my face), massaged him with lotion and changed his diaper, gave him medicine, nursed him, sang to him, burped him, and placed him in bed. He woke from his little slumber, rooted/played in bed quietly for a good fifteen minutes, and fell asleep, on his own, by 6:05pm. What a good boy! 

Three weeks ago, that never would have happened.

It's now 10:25pm and he's still sleeping (though stirring a bit). The last few nights, he started giving us back 4-5 hour stretches at the beginning of the night. It's a lovely thing. Unfortunately, tonight my husband wasn't feeling good (Yo-tan got ElyZ sick, who got hubby sick) so I'm the only one awake in my apartment. 

It's quiet. Strange. And a little lonely.

So I'm sitting here, keeping an eye on my baby through my spy monitor, getting ready to brush my teeth and head to sleep (after a dreamfeed).

Wouldn't it be great if Yo-tan followed today's pattern? However it works, I'm grateful for today. The work and discipline over the past two weeks has totally been worth it. Very little crying from baby (or me). Success feels good.


*I decided to change the order of the bedtime routine. I had previously been nursing him prior to reading the poetry book, but the book had become too stimulating for him. As such, I now read the book first and wind down from there; it has worked much better.