Our little Miss Gemma is now 5 months. No dr. visit this month so the weigh in isn’t official but our scale says over 19lbs. She is wearing 9 months clothes (this is the longest she has been in one size) but they are quickly getting too snug. She is quite an active baby and rolls over every time you set her on the ground. She tries very hard to grab things and has become quite adept at yanking mommy’s hair. She thinks it is a rope for her to climb on, apparently. She’ll concentrate on things and sometimes gets such a big smile she almost looks evil. She can hold her toys very well and move them from hand to hand and loves to put everything in her mouth. She laughs a lot and recognizes her mommy and daddy. She likes to give hugs and snuggle in your neck. And she really likes watching the intro song to the TV show “Bones”. She’ll stop whatever she’s doing to stare at it. She is such a smart little baby.
But now we are faced with the dilemma of getting her to sleep through the night. She is 50/50 right now. I’ve finally gotten a bedtime routine down. She gets a small bowl of rice cereal and a few ounces of water from a cup (she’s not a fan of the sippy and prefers a regular ol’ cup and can almost hold it herself to get a drink) around 7. Then a tubby to clean the rice out of her hair and ears. Some nights we let her play in the tub. Other nights we just do a quick clean. Then a little bit of quiet playtime (we let her jump out her excess energy in her jump-jump if she’s a little rowdy).
Then I nurse her and rock her. I can have her asleep and in her crib between 9:30 – 10. She normally sleeps until 3:30-4:30am. Then I change her and bring her to my bed for a quick feed and back to sleep for us both. I get up between 5-5:30 for work. She sleeps in until closer to 8. Then Linc gets her up for daycare.
Some nights she will fight going to sleep and is up till 11 or later. Then she might wake up around 2.
But some nights she sleeps from 10 to 6am when I wake her up to feed her before I go to work. She’ll normally go right back to sleep.
I can’t recall the last time I’ve had a straight 8 hours of sleep. Just the other night I was so tired that I didn’t even remember going to her room around 12 and bringing her back to my bed. I woke up around 3 to her crying in my bed and was startled to see her there. I thought Lincoln must have brought her in. Nope, it was me. Poor thing could’ve been smooshed in the bed (not really, I must have sensed she was in there because I was sleeping on less than an inch worth of bed space and she had the whole middle to sleep diagonally on).
Ideally, I would like her in bed before 9 and then I could wake her for breakfast around 5:30 or 6. I like nursing her and then holding her while she sleeps for a few minutes before I put her in my crib (total 20-30 minutes) for bedtime. It’s my quiet cuddle time, which I don’t get much of during the day because of work.
Now I am asking for help. Anyone have any advice on a technique they used to get their little one down for the whole night? And is “cold turkey” really effective? Is it really hard on the parents?
*Note - I drafted this post last week and since then, she has gone to bed every night by nine and has slept through the night. No problem. But tips are still welcome.
2 comments:
When Andrew was that age, we had a bedtime routine similar to what you have now. At this age he would down his bottle so quickly he would still be awake when it was gone. So, I'd rock him until he fell asleep. At 6 months old, it was taking a while to rock him to sleep and then when he'd fall asleep, I'd lay him in the crib and he'd open his eyes. My back was hurting from rocking him (he was a chunk!) and it would make me frustrated because I wanted to go to sleep myself. So, I decided it was time for cold turkey. He'd be clean, dry and fed and I'd lay him in his crib at 8:00 pm. He cried for 4 nights (sometimes for quite a while), but after that - no problems with bedtime! I'm not sure if that was cruel of us, but it saved me from the back pain and made me less frustrated with him when I'd be trying to rock him and he'd be fighting the sleep.
I just let my kids cry themselves to sleep. Ivy will go to bed around 8pm then wake up between 330 and 430, I'll nurse her then put her back to bed. Sometimes she cries, but most of the time she falls right back to sleep. She is only 3 months so I don't mind that she wakes up once, she probably needs that nourishment. By the time she is 6 months I will just let her cry through then night, but usually that is not necessary. By then my kids are sleeping through the night anyways. Remember that kids go through testing periods and see if you will come get them. Don't give in but ulimately you know your child. I hope her sleeping through the night lasts!
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