Sarah is 7 months old today! She is a very happy baby. She loves to cuddle. She is exclusively breastfeed and is now also eating 3 meals a day. She’s almost 17 pounds and is 27″ long and is very healthy. She is sitting up by herself. And she absolutely doesn’t sleep through the night.
On a typical night, I put her to bed around 7 p.m. I nurse and rock her and she is usually asleep in 10 minutes. After that, she will cry approx. every 30 minutes -1 hour. When she cries, I will go and retrieve her pacifier, and sometimes she’ll immediately go back to sleep. If not, I will get her back up, and rock/nurse again. She will go back to sleep very quickly, but the whole thing repeats itself throughout the evening.
When I go to bed, I put her in the bed beside me and we co-sleep for the rest of the night. I typically nurse her around 11 p.m. or whenever I put her in our bed, and on a good night, she will wake up once around 3:30 to nurse, and then wake up around 6 or so to nurse, and then sleep about another hour before getting up for the day at about 7:15. On a “not so good” night, like LAST night, she will wake up 5 or 6 times between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Since she is right next to me, it is not very difficult to nurse her throughout the night. And she usually only nurses for about a minute or two before going back to sleep. But obviously she can’t get herself to go back to sleep, after she wakes up, without me. Sometimes I can use the pacifier, but many times I give up and just nurse so I can go back to sleep myself!
I enjoy cosleeping and having her beside me. But I feel we are creating some bad habits that are going to be really difficult to break down the road, especially when I start to think about weaning. And frankly, I would like an uninterrupted night’s sleep. She has such a sweet spirit, that I can’t stand the idea of leaving her to “cry it out” during the night. Are there any other options?
2 replies on “Sleep”
I’m pretty sure you know what I’ll say. I don’t knock co-sleeping it’s great! But they are learning every second. Babies are a lot smarter than what we give them credit for. She hasn’t learned how to fall asleep on her own. We all wake up during the night, even adults, but we have learned how to go back to sleep. Curtis is sleeping from 8pm-7am without a peep, without making him cry it out. It doesn’t seem like she will have to cry it out if she goes down so easily. The question is do you still want to co-sleep? If so, that is the life right now.
If not then there is a lot of info out there to do it the right way.
I would start by placing her in her crib and everytime she wakes up comfort her and nurse her but put her back in the crib. She will “learn.”
I really doubt it’s gas if you don’t notice it during the day too.
Alice, you are absolutely right, she hasn’t learned how to fall asleep on her own. We are trying some different things tonight…I just tried rubbing her tummy until she fell asleep, but she woke right up 5 minutes later. I don’t think she’s getting any rest, herself, because she can’t stay asleep without my presence!