Captain's Log Stardate 012216: Sleep Like a Baby?

Now that I've actually made it to the magical "It gets better" place, it's so much easier to talk about stuff. I also don't feel as compelled to write about all the depressing, unhappy times I experienced. Maybe that's what happens to parents. You sort of just want to forget about the difficult times, and you do. Anyway, part of my plan with this blog was to write about stuff that I didn't expect or had to learn on my own through some difficult experience(s). I don't think it's because other parents didn't have to learn it themselves, but perhaps they forgot about it and thus didn't share it with me (or whoever else they share parenting advice with). I wanted to try to write about these things while I was still in them or remembering them to help other parents have a leg up, so to speak. So this blog's topic (pulled from a little list of things I wrote down to share as they cropped up) is about sleep.

Getting babies to sleep is obviously a huge thing. If you Google it, you will see tons of websites, including plenty of sleep consultants who are happy to take your money for their services. I didn't really think much about baby sleep at first because my experience was that newborns tend to just fall asleep when they're sleepy and wake up when they're hungry. I didn't really feel there was much I could do to change that schedule and thought it would regulate on its own (which it really pretty much did). What really threw me for a loop was when right around two months old, Junior Mate suddenly just stopped napping during the day. I thought, "Well, maybe she just doesn't need to nap as much," so I didn't worry about getting her to nap. Then, one day she didn't nap AT ALL the whole day. That was the day First Mate and I left Junior Mate with my mom while we went on a dinner date. We were gone about two hours. When we stepped off the elevator onto our floor, we heard crying and thought, "Uh-oh, Junior Mate must be tired and hungry." My mom informed me that Junior Mate had cried inconsolably the ENTIRE time we were gone. I felt so guilty, not because Junior Mate had been crying but because my mom had been dealing with an inconsolable baby by herself for 2+ hours. (It is just as exhausting as it sounds.) We felt so guilty about it, in fact, that we wouldn't leave her with our visiting parents for months afterwards, only going out for whole family meals or eating in.

I figured out that the reason Junior Mate had cried that whole time was because she was just exhausted from not napping. I realized she wouldn't go to sleep on her own anymore and that I would have to encourage her to nap. I was pretty stressed about this whole napping thing, so I bought a couple of books and looked at sleep consulting sites online. One site I found to be pretty helpful because it has free suggested schedules for babies from age Newborn through Toddler was The Baby Sleep Site. I still consult this site to get an idea of about how long the average baby Junior Mate's age can stay awake between naps, how long naps (ideally) should be, and about how many feedings they should have per day. It has helped me understand what to expect on the sleeping front and helped me through a couple of sleep regressions and a nap transition.  I also read the below book (image links to Amazon's book page), which has some great tips on how to help your baby sleep at various ages and explains why their sleep habits change over time so you can better understand and respond to the changes. It contains alternative methods to the controversial "cry it out" method if you think you're at that point but can't stand listening to your baby cry for however long it takes for him/her to fall asleep.

So here's the long and short of it: once babies get interested enough in their world to pay more attention to it (around 2-3 months), they stop falling asleep on their own. There's just too much interesting stuff out there, and they want to learn all of it! You have to help create an atmosphere that encourages them to fall asleep. Create a routine that has cues to let them know it's time for a nap, and watch for their "I'm sleepy" cues. For me, it helped to kind of watch Junior Mate for a few days and get an idea of how long she stayed awake before she started showing signs of sleepiness (crankiness, rubbing eyes, staring, etc.). This helped me get an idea of what her natural schedule was and enabled me to watch the clock in order to prepare for nap-time before she got overtired. Because the totally unfair thing is that the more tired babies get, the more difficult it is for them to fall asleep. Anyone who ever told you to keep a baby up so that s/he would sleep better at night was WRONG. They need good naps during the day in order to sleep well at night. It felt so counterintuitive to me, but Junior Mate really did nap better and sleep better at night when I made her nap regularly.

But you have to be careful not to give them too much sleep during the day…it's a balance. And realize that as soon as you get used to one schedule, it's likely to change. Junior Mate and I were in a pretty predictable routine of three naps a day (morning, mid-day, afternoon), with one of them being on the short side, when she suddenly wouldn't nap in the afternoon anymore. It was a rough week or so while I figured out that she was transitioning from three naps to two and finally decided to let her do that. For a few weeks, we had some days when we took afternoon naps and some days when we didn't. Now, we're solidly in a two nap a day schedule (morning, afternoon), and she's handling it pretty well. Sometimes she gets fussy at the end of the day (when she's awake for 4-5 hours instead of just 3), but the new schedule is working well for us.

Since I figured out the whole napping thing and been able to put Junior Mate on a rough schedule, we've both been much happier. She's getting enough sleep, and I'm able to sort of plan the day around her naps. Some people advocate making the baby adjust to your schedule (which I know you can't avoid if you're working and taking baby to daycare). However, I'm a firm believer that things will work best, and you will all be happier trying to do things, if you work around baby's schedule. It may be a pain, but I remind myself that it's only for a couple of years. If you work and have to have baby on a schedule that matches a daycare, then stick to that same schedule on the weekends. Obviously, I only have the one baby, so I have no idea if this idea is even feasible with multiple kids. However, it has worked very well for me with Junior Mate. She does great at restaurants and other places out, as long as I plan the outing around her nap times.

I guess that's about it for now. For anyone who's still in that newborn stage wondering when they will ever get sleep again, I will repeat what everyone keeps telling you: it really does get better. Until then, though, pick at least one of their naps during the day when you will also nap. I know you probably don't want to nap every time they do (I wanted to actually be awake sometimes during the day), but if you pick one of the naps every day to nap yourself, it will help. Good luck with your baby's sleep! Feel free to share your stories! I'd love to hear what has worked for other people!