Oh Sweet Baby Sleep!

I feel like a new woman. Lincoln is finally on a sleep schedule. Mind you that in no way means that he is sleeping through the night without waking up, but he is sleeping at night. He has been a fairly decent sleeper since he came home. The problem was he would scream every night for about 2 hours straight (we figured it was just colic) then fall asleep for an evening cat nap. Then he would wake up after about 45 minutes and be awake until around midnight. The other problem was that he would wake up in the middle of the night and want to play for a couple of hours. His sister pulled this trick on us until she was about 8 months old. It was exhausting even back then with just one child. Of course right about the time Lincoln was ready to go to sleep, the other two kids would wake up and it was time to start the day on very little sleep. Oh, I hate that feeling of needing to wake up to be with the kids, but feeling like you would give anything for just for 1 more hour (or even 5 more minutes) of sleep.

A couple of friends (thank you Sarah and Melodi) told me about a book called Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. What an amazing book. It is so right on, at least for our family. Basically what it says is that your baby should never be up for more than about two hours. At first I thought this was crazy, but I noticed he was right. At about 2 hours Lincoln would start getting fussy and then would get overtired and have a problem sleeping. He also says that after I think it was the first 3 months you should be able to put your baby to sleep around 7pm and have them sleep about 12 hours only waking for feedings. Then they should go back to sleep about 2 hours later for a morning nap, take an early afternoon nap, and a late afternoon nap and back to bed at 7pm. "Yeah right" I said. "our baby won't go to sleep until about 11pm and then has to wake up in the middle of the night for play time". Lincoln was right on target for his morning naps, but I didn't think that bedtime would ever work out. In order to get him taking the regular daytime naps I did find that I had to let him "cry it out" a little. I know that this method doesn't work for everyone, but it works like a charm for me. If I didn't let him cry for ten minutes or so to fall asleep on his own, he would end up crying for hours while I held him. That didn't make any sense to me. Daytime naps were working so well that I decided to try his method in the evening at 11 weeks (a little earlier than the book says, but what the heck). Basically all I did was when he starts getting fussy in the evening which was around 9pm the first night, I put him in his Amby Bed and let him cry/fuss until he fell asleep. It took about 15 minutes the first time, but again that was better than the 2 hours he usually spend crying at night. It worked. Now I needed to keep him asleep. I decided that when he woke up to eat I would feed him and put him back down even if he didn't seem tired. I would let him cry for about 20 minutes and then take him out if he wasn't asleep by then. I tried it and within 1o minutes of crying he was back to sleep for 4 more hours. That has been the last times he has cried or tried to play in the middle of the night. Even if he seems pretty awake after a nighttime feeding, I just put him back down in his bed and he may fuss a little for a couple of minutes but that is it. Our little guy is so much happier now that he is sleeping well (and so am I). We don't have the 2 hour crying sessions every night and he doesn't need to be held all of the time anymore. Life is good and I am starting to see the light at the other end of the loooong baby tunnel. So, a shout out and big thank you to Marc Weissbluth who wrote the most useful parenting book of them all.