Still my favorite topic. We have not made much progress. Last night he went down at 10 PM, then woke at 11 for his feeding. Woke up again at 2 and I took him into the nursery an hour to stretch it out to 4 hours between feedings. Fed him at 3, back to sleep, he woke up at 5:30. I didn’t feel like getting up again for an hour and a half so I brought him into bed and he slept til 7:00, when I fed him again. After that he was WIIIIIIDEEE AWAKE!!! and happy. I’ve just put him down for his morning nap and am crossing my fingers it’ll be a long one so I can nap too.
I know he doesn’t need to eat every 4 hours at night. But I’m not sure how to stretch it out any more other than rocking him (or bringing him into bed, which I don’t want to do).
July 7, 2008 at 7:04 pm |
I feel your pain… it wasn’t too bad with our first child, but with our twins I think I averaged 4 hours of non-contiguous sleep for many months… it gets better when they get around a year old, though!
A schedule and routine helps, I think (e.g. bath, reading time before bed, etc.) along with keeping the room dark at night and not letting them nap too long during the day by opening the blinds after a while. Not letting them nap for hours was hard because that was one of the only times we had during the day to either nap or get some work done! And then there is the letting-them-cry-themselves-to-sleep thing in their room, which we did sometimes but usually broke down if it went on too long and picked them up. I’d usually rock or hold them on my shoulder until they went to sleep although 80% of the time they’d wake up again when I tried to put them down (so frustrating!)
I guess it basically boils down to suffering through until he’s old enough to sleep longer on his own
July 11, 2008 at 5:16 am |
Hey Kenrick!
I’m surprised you say to not let them nap too long, several people have told me the more they sleep in the day the better they sleep at night. Maybe it depends on age?
I don’t know HOW you did it with twins.. wow. Parents of twins are super human!