52:3- Healthy Sleep habits, Happy...Mommy!

Gwen has been a good night sleeper since the beginning; at 6 weeks, she was sleeping 6 to 9 hours straight at night. She's now sleeping a solid 10 hours every night. Of course at 13 weeks, she had several nights where she woke at 3am, but I nursed her and she fell right back asleep. I decided it was a growth spurt.

The ultimate sleep book that I've been using as my bible is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Recommended to me by a friend, it's been such a great reference. It's broken down into chapters for different age ranges; when Gwen was a few weeks old, it warned me about the 6 week mark, when babies cry more, but then relief comes as they gradually become less fussy. Then at 13 weeks, when she was waking up in the middle of the night, it said the solution was to put her to bed earlier, as many babies are overtired, and need to be put to sleep earlier to help catch up on their sleep. An overtired body is biologically built to stay awake; thats why tired children sometimes seem wired; they cant settle down. Sleep begets sleep. The book also says to wait 4 days with any change in sleep schedule to see if it works.

Well we tried it and It worked. We started putting her down at 7:30 instead of 8:30, and after four nights, she was sleeping longer at night. We also saw an improvement in her napping; her afternoon nap has been getting longer. She usually takes three 45 minute naps per day. Her afternoon nap was 1.5 hours yesterday. It was amazing to see it work!

It is still a battle getting her to fall asleep. No matter how much shooshing and patting and rocking we do, she continues to cry herself to sleep during the daytime! She's done this ever since she was a tiny babe, it's like she has to get over the 'hump' before she can fall asleep. I'm waiting for the day when she will peacefully fall asleep...when does that start happening? 6 months? A year?

...maybe I should reference my sleep book...