Sleep Through the Night – Part 2

Challenges of my baby Sleep Habits

I would like to start my blog series by first saying how totally and completely blessed I am to have Sadie –  she is one of the funniest people I have ever met, she’s curious, happy and full of moxy…I just wish she would sleep the tiniest bit better. Even in her early newborn days she was described by her midwives as a ‘snacker’ which means she ate small bits and then napped small bits round the clock, which meant very little sleep for me. Everyone told me it would get better at 1 month, then at 3 months, but here I am at 6 months with no end in sight. During the day she gives me long stretches of time without eating, but at night its back to snacking virtually all the time. I would, at this point, describe myself as the human pacifier.

Her naps are not ideal either – she very quickly got used to my carrier and prefers her naps in there, which was fine when she was 6 pounds. Now she’s nearing 20.  I have been working hard to do at least one nap in a bed but, as with night time, she requires the human pacifier to be with her, and even then she may only nap for 30min, if I’m lucky. I hear glorious stories of babies who take 2 hour naps, 2 times a day – I can tell you that is not my little miss. I’m happy with 2 hours in a whole day.

Ok enough complaining, let’s get to the task at hand, the first thing required of me by the ‘No-Cry Sleep Solution’ was to track her sleeping habits for a 24 hour period. The book has charts and graphs for me to fill in but I thought I would just summarize it for you. Here it is:

Naps:
9:50am – nursing in my lap, 30min
12:00pm – Carrier, 40min
3:30 – Carrier, 1.5 hours (this was special!)

Bedtime:
7:00 – start bedtime routine
7:30 – start nursing her to sleep
9:20 – finally sleeping
10:20 – wake up to nurse
11:00 – sleep
1:00 – wake up to nurse
2:22 – sleep
3:40 – up to nurse
4:40 – sleep
6:15 – up to nurse and kick her feet around
7:00 – up for the day.

The Quest for Peaceful Nights: A 30-Day Sleep Challenge

That’s right, read it and weep (for me, and for yourself if this looks familiar). She spent around 5 hours nursing (nursing/sleeping) and around 5 hours actually detached from me for sleep. The longest stretch I got the whole night was 2 hours, and I was grateful for that! I really do love sleeping with my little one but I am not sure how much more of this I can take. I worry she is not sleeping enough and I’m worried for my sanity.

My goal for us over the next 30 days is simple, to have us both sleeping through the night (which by definition is a 5 hour stretch). Oh – and I would like to be able to put her down and leave the room for a few hours too – right now I go to bed with her at 7pm!

So what’s the next step? I’m not so sure… I was told by the author not to read ahead until I recorded the sleep habits. I’m going to take the next few days to read the book, figure out a game plan, and get back to you. Fingers crossed that this works!

This is Sadie-kins, daughter of bebo mia c0-owner Natasha Marchand and secretly evil non-sleeping villain. She looks sweet in this photo, but really she is plotting more ways to keep her mom up all night. In Sadie vs Mommy challenge, who will win?