wrighty: Thanks for the chapter recs. I had been reading the whole book and it was a little much to take in. For most sleeps, she goes down pretty drowsy and not fully awake. She's starting to learn how to hold things more but no rolling for her yet. Her sister who sleeps well is starting to roll. Go figure.
Thank you
Yeah, HSHHC is a *very* badly written book. Weissbluth really should have found a better editor. Or have someone else write it for him!
That said, both my babies have been textbook HSHHC. We didn't have to let DS CIO at all, he just fell into the patterns more or less perfectly. DD, on the other hand, needed some tough love to get over a couple night wakings, but for the most part follows his patterns pretty well as well. I think we just have a harder time with her because we can't keep her schedule as well when there are two kids to care for.
I do find it annoying that he doesn't have better solutions for families with more than one kid. His solution is to get or hire some help to watch after the kid at home. Well, I'm not going to pay a babysitter $15/hr just to sit at home and watch my baby sleep everyday! He needs to give more practical solutions for this very common situation.
newyorkgirl - I was JUST thinking the same thing the other day with regards to the book's shortcomings with regards to having an older sibling. I can't hire someone to watch DD for the 30min it takes for me to bring DS to preschool and back, or to watch her while I go with DS to his classes, but I also can't make my active DS stay home all day every day either. It's just not feasible. While I'd LOVE to have the flexibility with DD that I had with only one child to be able to protect her napping schedule in the same way, I just can't.
Question - OK, 3rd nap. If DD doesn't take at least a kitty-cat nap, then she's so overtired when getting her evening bottle (even if we do bedtime earlier) that she's falling asleep .5oz in to the bottle, and if we don't do everything we can to keep her up (which pisses her off to no end), then she's getting just enough shuteye to take the edge off and is very difficult to get down for the evening. So, my question is, what are you all doing if they wake up from their 2nd nap at a weird time? If DD gets up early, I'll try to put her down for a little nap in between. But if she sleeps late, we get in to weird territory where I question whether to put her down for a 20min nap, or just skip it and deal with the consequences.
newyorkgirl - I was JUST thinking the same thing the other day with regards to the book's shortcomings with regards to having an older sibling. I can't hire someone to watch DD for the 30min it takes for me to bring DS to preschool and back, or to watch her while I go with DS to his classes, but I also can't make my active DS stay home all day every day either. It's just not feasible. While I'd LOVE to have the flexibility with DD that I had with only one child to be able to protect her napping schedule in the same way, I just can't.
Add me to this club. I had a tearful conversation with DH a few weeks ago about how I just can't cater to DS's sleep schedule the way I could with DD. Luckily my ped. made me feel a lot better about DS not sleeping through the night. I was starting to feel like a failure as a parent. I have also found that by putting him in long sleeve/footed pajamas that he is sleeping SO much better. I think he's been somewhat cold. I'm so surprised that he likes to sleep like this especially in August in Houston in 100 degree heat, but he does!
I just remembered something else that bugged me about HSHHC... there is one story about a family that adopted a little girl at 9 months old. The mother was worried that the baby was missing the family that she had been living with, and Weissbluth basically brushed this concern off with a "nah, babies don't know the difference" kind of attitude. (I am paraphrasing here since it's been awhile since I read that). My son was about the same age at the time and I was a little horrified/offended at the suggestion that it didn't matter to him who was taking care of him. Ok, enough complaining about that book!
Night 2 - was much, much improved! He fell asleep within 20 minutes. This was huge since that's about how long it would take him to fall asleep even with rocking or nursing. Unfortunately he woke up around midnight. I am willing to nurse him once per night, but I felt that midnight was too early. It took him a little over an hour to fall asleep again. When I woke around 3 and checked on him, he was sleeping soundly. My husband said that he heard DS again sometime in the night, but he wasn't sure what time it was. DS must not have been up long because my husband fell back asleep and I never woke up. So I did not end up nursing him that night.
Night 3 - He was really, really tired and feel asleep only a few minutes after I laid him down. I cheated a bit because I stood next to the crib while his eyelashes were fluttering. He wasn't looking at me but could probably see me out of the corner of his eye. He was asleep for about 2.5 hours then he was up again. It took him about 30-40 minutes to fall asleep again. He woke me up around 4 and I nursed him then. I put him back in the crib and I stood by him for a minute in case that would help him fall asleep. Well, it didn't - after a few minutes he started looking up at me. So I left... he cried for no more than 2 minutes and then he was out.
So all in all, things are going very well. If we can just get over that one early wake-up, then I think we should be good. Originally my plan was to night-wean him, but I might continue to do one feeding per night for awhile. This is still a HUGE improvement over our current situation, and for the moment I am enjoying the opportunity to check on him and nurse him in the early morning hours.
My son just started sleeping through the night at 9 months old:-) I did a gradual extinction to achieve this and it only took one night!!! Thank goodness, I don't think my nerves could handle much more... He is still getting rocked to sleep for bedtime and naps but I would like to stop this also. Do I just do the sleep routine and put him in his bed and do the gradual extintion?
DS, who will be 8 months old tomorrow, has always had a rough time getting to sleep. We used Ferber and still have some nights where he cries for 15-20min, but then he will fall asleep and usually not wake up until 4/5 am. Lately, he has reached a ton of physical milestones (crawling, sitting up from laying on his stomach, etc.). We recently moved his crib mattress down (after finding him sitting up and grabbing on the top of the crib). Ever since then, his new thing to is stand up, grabbing on the crib railing. He goes completely hysterical. I don't think he's figured out how to sit back down yet.
Any advice on what we should do? I have been going in there and laying him back down because I'm worried he is going to fall. But I'm also worried about creating a bad habit (him standing up on purpose because he knows one of us will come in).
Gina - If DD (who is 2 weeks older than your DD) gets naps thrown off, we do everything we can to get her into bed early. She does still take that late afternoon cat nap but if she misses it, like today, she is SO tired by 6-630 that we just try our best to hurry things along and get her to her crib at that time.
LKMang - that happened to us with DS. We bought a really flat quilted crib bumper at PBK and put that in the crib. Prior to that, we didn't have anything else in the crib except a crib sheet on the mattress and his lovey. But we figured that at that age, he should be able to move his head into a position where he could breathe. Besides, the bumper we bought was very thin, so he couldn't get any additional height to climb over the railing. Then we just left him to figure it out for himself. The first couple of days, he would try to get back down and would fall down like a chopped-down tree. But then he learned to sit down on his rump instead.
katmg -
I was starting to feel like a failure as a parent.
I am so with you there. I felt really horrible and stressed out all the time. DD is slowly falling into a routine that seems to work pretty well into ours, so I'm a little less stressed now. But I feel like all I'm doing everyday is adding up sleep time or counting down the time to the next nap.
loucie - we're doing gradual extinction. We do just as you said... bedtime routine and then put him in the crib. The last part of our routine is nursing, so he's pretty drowsy by that part. However, his level of drowsiness has little impact on how fast he falls asleep!
Question for you all... If your child ordinarily falls asleep on his own and has for some time - how long does it take him to do so? Does he cry/fuss/whine? I am just wondering what will ultimately be considered "normal" once we're done with this process.
We're still having trouble with him waking up around midnight for about an hour. Last night I decided to nurse to see if that would help him go back to sleep quickly. Nope. If we can get over that, and if naps improve (it's taking him about 40 min to fall asleep) then I think we'll have smooth sailing.
Originally Posted by gina73
