Sleep. Glorious Sleep.

Are they sleeping well? Are they sleeping through the night? Are you following a sleep routine? Are YOU getting any sleep? Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. I would say that 50% of your post-baby discussions are around sleep (the other 50% are around food/bodily excretions which I put in the same category, as never before has the relationship between what goes in and what comes out been so clear).

I LOVE sleep. I can sleep anywhere and for long periods of time and when I wake, I am always planning my next opportunity for more sleep. This does not bode well for an expectant mother-to-be. Fast forward to Atticus now being almost 11 weeks old. He doesn’t cry much, generally only has one feed each night and sleeps lots during the day. This means that I too am getting a reasonable amount of sleep (although nowhere near my usual requirement of 10 hours a night!). As I am no baby whisperer and can generally be quite a stressed person, my only explanation for having a chilled out baby so far (mums learn very quickly not to count their chickens) is that we have used the Save our sleep book and routine from day one (I still refer to it every day). Now I know that Save our sleep and other similar baby sleep advice books are highly polarising so I’m definitely not saying that everyone needs to go out and join the “cult”, I just wanted to share some of the things from that book that appear (because nothing is ever certain with a baby) to have worked well for us so far.

1. Following a routine (any routine will do!). Sleep books set out quite strict routines to follow as your baby grows (your maternal health nurse will probably tell you that they are too strict). We have tried to follow the Save our sleep routines since we got home from the hospital. What I like about using a routine is that both Andy and I are on the same page so that we both know what is “supposed” to be happening when. It also has given us confidence to try things like expressing and self settling right from the start because they are slotted into the routines. I also love that Atticus’s bedtime is 7pm which leaves the next three hours for Andy and I to have dinner together, catch up and chill out; and even though we are often talking about Atticus, I don’t feel like our relationship has turned completely into the Atticus show.

After banging on about using routines, I should say that it’s not as if I’m sitting at home every day rigidly watching the clock. I “break” the routine pretty much every day as we are out and about but I do try to generally stick to a few principals (7am up, 7pm bedtime, dreamfeed at 10.30pm and I’ll keep an eye on how much sleep he gets during the day to try to find time for a catch up sleep at some stage in the afternoon).

2. Identifying which cry is which (which is emotional and which is a protest). Knowing from the start to listen out for two different types of cries has meant that we were more confident to let Atticus self settle when we thought he was just protesting. On the other hand, the second we hear what we think is an emotional cry, we pick him up straight away and try to figure out if it’s food, wind, temperature etc. Notice I say “think” because it’s sometimes very hard to tell the difference.

3. Not waiting for tired signs as that’s often too late. This links back to following the routine. When I’m home, I put Atticus to bed during the day in line with the routine rather than waiting for him to start yawning or being sleepy. A few times when we have probably kept him up for too long, he’s been extremely irritable and if he has reached this stage, pretty much the only solution is to feed him continuously for a long time and then we can finally get him to bed.

4. Wake a sleeping baby…. gently. Most people say, don’t wake a sleeping baby (probably cos you’re so damn happy that they’re sleeping so why in the hell would you disturb it?!?). In line with the routine, we wake Atticus up for his next feed (if he’s not already woken himself up). I assume that this is in routines so that they don’t oversleep during the day? But for me, I like it for the selfish reason that it helps me keep track of how much sleep he’s had during the day. For example he’s now on a four hour feed routine which involves 2 hours of feeding & play followed by 2 hours of sleep which is pretty easy for my still in overdrive pregnancy brain to keep track of. I do feel a bit mean waking him up so I just do it very gently by loosening his swaddle and he’ll gradually wake up usually doing quite a humourous, exaggerated big stretch!

5. Self settling tips. Even when we put him to bed fully awake, Atticus is pretty good at just hanging by himself and falling asleep at some stage. At times he protests and we will typically leave him alone to self settle himself (whether this be when we have put him to bed or when he wakes up during a sleep). But if the protesting continues, some of the things we do which seem to help Atticus are: go in and rub his belly or stroke his forehead, if it’s his night time sleep sometimes just switching on a dull lamp in his room works, or we might need to pick him up, re-swaddle him and give him a bit of a cuddle to calm him down.

I think the important thing about being confident with the self settling goes back to my point number 2 about knowing the difference between their cries. You could think that you’re “failing” at self settling because your baby keeps screaming but it might have been an emotional cry rather than protesting for that whole time and so they would never be able to settle (except if they fall asleep through pure exhaustion at all the screaming). So I guess my advice is, only try to self settle when you’re sure they are just protesting, otherwise pick up that baby and give it whatever it needs!

So these are my sleep thoughts at week 10.5. This could all possibly go to hell next week but I hope to god not as I’m still that girl that loves sleep, glorious sleep.

The Quest for Sleep

From our recent Facebook chats it looks like everyone is having a few sleepless nights; change of weather, babies teething or just babies keeping us on our toes. So here is how we all (try to) sleep (though for Tom this mostly consists of trying to stay asleep while a persistent 7 month old whacks him in the face to try and get him to play).

Since all our babies are a little bit older I will skip the early days of our sleep journey that had us experiencing a few nights of  crying for no reason and one night of continuous feeding, which resulted in a desperate mama seeking out solutions from present hippies, reading up on how early is too early for CIO and the strange and frankly disturbing practice of this guy.

After all this drama and a few weeks where we believed that it was the “Rain - Peaceful and Soothing” white noise track that solved our problems (from an album list that included ”Strong Hair Dryer” and “Mellow Womb”) Frankie settled down to being happy to sleep in our bed with me (early nights for me!). I was really happy to do the co-sleeping thing since we all got a good amount of sleep and night feeds were SO MUCH EASIER. Naps were always decided by her (just don't miss a sleep cue) and try as I might I never really managed to stretch feeds out much longer than three hours apart during the day and her longest stretch was 5-6 hours at night. I did read up on "Eat, Play, Sleep" but I wasn't great at settling her without the calming milk coma so that usually turned into Eat, Play Eat, Sleep. 

Around the 4 month mark after small prompts from my mother (‘you were out of our bed by this stage’) and my husband (‘don’t you think she should be sleeping in her cot now?’ *hint hint*) I started to try and move her in to her cot, in our room, for at least the beginning of the night. She had always napped there, how hard could it be? Well, we picked a good time because it was surprisingly easy.... that week. Then we hit a ‘wonder week’. Screaming and rocking and patting and rocking and reassuring and patting and continued screaming became normal for nearly two weeks. This is when I started some bad habits. 

First rule of any ‘how to make my baby sleep’ advice is PUT YOUR BABY DOWN AWAKE. From Babycentre, to the numerous mama blogs, to the French; all say that getting a baby all the way to sleep in your arms/bed/sling/pram and then moving them to their own cot is a BAD IDEA. The analogy that really resonated with me came from Troublesome Tots:

“Imagine going to bed in your bedroom. A few hours later you wake up on your front lawn. Would you simply roll over and go back to sleep in the grass? Or would you stand up and start screaming? Would you demand loudly to be let back into the house so that you could sleep in your bed? Do you think you would be freaked out by the mysterious force that somehow carried you out to the lawn?”

They go on to say that if this kept happening to you night after night you would start dreading going to bed, always wondering if you would end up on the front lawn. I was, at this stage, either nursing Frankie to sleep or cuddling her until she was asleep, counting to 100 and then sloooowly lowering her into her cot. On a good night she would stir and stay asleep. On a bad night she would wake up straight away and we would start the routine again. 

I’m not sure how long I did this for. At least a couple of months. It got tiring pretty quickly and she always ended up in our bed, sometimes for most of the night. When she was about 6 1/2 months old and I hadn't slept for a couple of nights - due to Frankie's new habit of playing with my face and pulling my hair when she woke up in our bed, coupled with our increased anxiety about her ability to crawl towards the edge and the dog - I decided to turn to The Bible (aka Baby Love) as well as some help from the Troublesome Tots Website and try some tough love. 

I finally set a routine for day time naps. I had always just waited for the tired signs (which, admittedly is the advice until about 4ish months old) but now we needed set naps so that she wouldn’t sleep past 5-5.30 and push her bedtime back. A week away in Adelaide helped us transition into a new routine on the return home. Frankie went straight into her own room (cot lowered due to superior baby standing up skills) and nap times were set. 10am and 3pm became non-negotiable times (or 9.30 and 2.30, or 10.30 and 3.30 - totally non-negotiable). I started putting her in a little sleeping bag thingy to stop her kicking her sheets off and letting her know it was time to sleep. I also really did start pausing before going in her room. She embraced new naps and slept longer and more comfortably. 

Nights were a bit harder. The first night she cried for 5, 5 and then 8 minutes before finally sleeping (I think any longer I wouldn’t have lasted). The next night she fussed a bit and SLEPT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE NIGHT. We weren’t counting any chickens but we really thought we had cracked it. Since then we have had mixed nights. Some nights she wakes at 10pm and 3am like she used to. Others just the once at 5am, others at 4am and she thinks it’s party time, sometimes she does 7pm until 7am. We are persisting and we are getting more sleep. She still cries some nights and I just have to trust that she will settle herself (which she does).  I sometimes break the rules - it's impossible not to when you hear the cries a little more desperate than normal, and go in to find her standing in her cot, beaming at you because she heard the door, and when you pick her up she clings to you like a little koala clinging to a tree, still smiling, because mama came to get her.