Sleep Training 10wk old night 2

Thanks to mama K and ginna and Rachel for reading, commenting and offering support. We are thinking that we are seeing improvement already-although I’m a little worried, for the past two days he won’t smile for me. He smiles for his dad but when he sees my face, its almost an automatic turn the head another way. I know this has got to be coincidental, but still it makes me wonder…  Although he isn’t going to sleep any sooner at night, he does seem to take 2 good naps now-which is backwards, sleep training is suppose to help night sleeping and THEN naps get better, but hey-our scoot man has been kicking against the norm since he’s been born-literally kicking…

A little about our set-up situation. Our baby is sleeping in the bassinet in our room. Probably not the best idea when having them cry it out. But I’m not sure I would sleep anyway. As far as checking it out with our physician Rachel, he said “some babies are babywise babies and CIO works, some don’t. If it doesn’t work then maybe try eliminating the 2 hours the child does sleep during the day and keep him up the whole time and then maybe he will crash at night.” Personally I don’t think “crashing” is healthy and hence the reason why we switched pediatricians.

But here is how the time went starting yesterday when I went in to get him at 4:50pm

5:00pm falls dead asleep in my arms and Cam comes home

5:15 put him in his bassinet to see how long he will sleep

5:35pm awake and playing in dads lap-laughing which makes me feel better

6:00pm feed him burp him, change him, wash hands and face, cam then takes him to the dark bedroom, puts a receiving blanket over his shoulder to cover any outside stimulation

6:50pm asleep in bassinet

6:58pm awake and cammon decides to try to swaddle him to see if that will help he doesn’t fall back to sleep

7:32 eyes wide open and making grunting noises while he tries to get out of swaddle

7:43pm starts to cry

—-Wait 10mins—-

7:53pm Cammon was going to wait but feels bad that he is there crying and completely swaddled-thinks it adds insult to injury…tisk tisk tisk I know

8:12pm Little guy wakes up again but doesn’t actually start crying until 8:21pm so 10 mins of him wiggling. We have a hard time because he is gassy and so far for the first 2 times we pick him up he burps-we burp him really really well before putting down, but he still finds burps to bother him.

—-Wait 20mins this time—-

8:41pm go to sooth

8:48pm back down and groggy but he doesn’t close his eyes

9:15pm he chills from 8:48 till now with eyes open and doesn’t cry until now at 9:15pm

—-Wait 45mins—-

10:00pm all of a sudden he stops crying. He isn’t sleeping, just not crying. He is just chilling in his crib. Wiggling all over and refuses to sleep, but not crying

10:30pm he starts crying now. We decide that 4 1/2 hours for the first stretch through the night is long enough and it is time to feed. See when we did go to the doctors on Monday for his shots (we are not doing this while he is still unhappy-hence why we waited until wed. when he went all tuesday night and all day wed no fever or anything-BUT the doctor was a little concerned he is 36th percentile with his weight and doesn’t want him to loose any more so we want to make sure we do feed him when he is hungry.) We decided to try to give him formula this time to see if it would sit heavier in his tummy and he would sleep longer and better for the next stretch.

We go to bed 11pm

2:45am Scoots wakes up crying.

3:00am I wait for a while to see if he would fall back to sleep, but at this point I give him some gripe water, stick the pacifier in his mouth and rock him. He falls asleep by 3:10am.

3:15am he wakes up. I do not go to him. He grunts and cries and whimpers till after 4:00am

4:30am There is no more noise coming from his bassinet and I am finally able to fall asleep.

6:10am Scoots wakes up I let him wiggle and whimper until 6:30am when he starts to cry. He had gone from 10:30pm to 6:30am without food and its time to feed him. Just because he did it once, doesn’t mean he can always do it. I planned to have this be his wake up time, but even talking and singing to him he fell asleep. I bring him into bed with Cam so he can keep close watch so I can get one more hour of sleep.

7:50 the little guy wakes up and is tired of laying around.  He wants to play.  We take the covers off our window, make it sunny and day time say good morning and change his diaper and put him in daytime clothes-oh yeah after his shower.  He loves taking showers with Cammon.  Which is uncommon I guess, but we want to make sure he doesn’t dislike water on his face.  He LOVES getting his hair washed…

Then he plays with Cammon until 9am.  He seems to be doing things, once again backwards.  As much as we’ve read to have him eat play and then sleep, we can’t seem to keep him awake after eating-Cam even changed his diaper after eating and he slept through it, so we put him down.  Today though, we throw in another experiment:

9:24am asleep on his TUMMY in the bassinet.  Our little guy hates his back and loves his tummy.  He sleeps longer on his tummy.  Our new pediatrician said that maybe he doesn’t like sleeping on his back at night because we’ve been sleeping him on his tummy during the day when I can watch him closely and am right there.  So we stopped sleeping him on his tummy, until today-I was going to try.

Sure enough 10:50am he starts to wake up-a whole hour and a half nap!!  But he wakes up very cranky very upset.  I wasn’t sure if it was because he ONLY slept an hour and a half.  So I assessed the situation and determined that since he went 8 plus hours the night before with no food for he first time in his life, he might be hungry.

11:00am I feed him and he eats a whole meal just 2 hours after his 9am feeding.  I don’t mind, he had a hard night.

He is soooo sleepy after this feeding too, I decided I would encourage it and put him in his stroller and take a walk

11:30-12noon he sleeps while I walk around the neighborhood talking to people and very happy we are both getting some fresh air.

I detach his car seat from the stroller and take it inside where he wakes up, but I rock the car seat and he falls asleep again.

1:15pm eyes open, but it was another hour of motionless nap before he woke up.  This time he wakes up content, not happy, but not crying.  I put him in his playmat and he watches the lights.  The I pick him up after 15 minutes and I talk to him while he is on my lap.  We dance to the music coming from the radio and then I put him on my legs and let him “fly.”   Thats the first time i did that and I kept my mouth shut the whole time just in case.

2:10pm he becomes fussy and I feed him-it being 3hours and 10min since the last time he ate.  I do remember reading that if you want a better chance of the baby sleeping through the night, feed him 4 times during the day.  Not sure if that works, but I’ve tried to keep it at at least 3 hours if not 3 1/2.  4 hours is a little too long of a stretch-he might think its nighttime, plus with the heat i don’t want him to get dehydrated.

At this point that I am writing this blog-I write my blog posts over the course of the whole day now…  He is in his bassinet sleeping on his tummy at 2:30pm it is now 2:52pm.  I am knocking on wood right now, but I am convinced that sleeping him on his tummy during the day will help him get his good naps in.  I also hope that by not being overtired by night we can start to avoid the crying it out for hours on end.  We will see.  Stay tuned for tonight and tomorrow!