Mr. Sandbaby

Ah the coveted sleep of new parents. We miss it so. Then again, I say this all the time, but I know I also need to recognize that we have it SO much easier than it could be. Our daughter started sleeping through the night (we’re talking 8+ hours) at about 5 weeks old – coincidentally starting on New Year’s Eve 2012.

We somewhat knew we were going to get lucky during her first couple weeks of life when we struggled to keep her awake during feedings. Our pediatrician was ready for us to let her sleep as long as she wanted at night as soon as she was back up to her birth weight. I think it takes the average baby 2 weeks; ours needed 3. And once she was back over 8 pounds, we were ready! Good thing, so was she.

Bugga slept great at night for quite awhile, with daytime napping happening here and there, when and where she felt like it. When I went back to work at 12 weeks and she started daycare, it became very clear we needed to focus more on those naps. Even worse, sometime around 14 weeks she started waking up at night too. We verified with our pediatrician that she wasn’t waking to eat since she had previously slept through the night and not needed meals then, so we were careful not to use food as a crutch.

Meanwhile, I started reading every book on sleep training I could find, while constantly fearing the lights on the baby monitor that alerted us to her waking up earlier than desired. I read BabyWise, Lull-a-baby, Your Fussy Baby...and we are now trying to use a combination of all these (and any other ideas, hint hint) to teach our daughter she is capable of soothing herself to sleep without Mom or Dad. Cry it out (CIO) scares me at this age (4 months old), though if this keeps up I might have a different opinion two months from now. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes...

Rolling Over

When Bugga mastered rolling from back to front, all of us were SO proud. That is, until later that night when we found her in her swaddle flipped over onto her stomach against the slats of the crib at 5am. Which of course resulted in hysterics. Not on my watch, buddy!

OK fine, so no more swaddle. She has always been a Baby Houdini and managed to get at least one arm out, so we figured she could handle a regular sleep sack. Except while we thought the problem would be her hands getting in her face, that was not the primary challenge. After mastering this “half roll”, you could not stop her from practicing. We would lie her down on a quilt, and up those legs would go to throw herself over onto her stomach. And then she was stuck because she couldn’t roll back and eventually she would need to put her face down (gasp!).

We spent several hours early one morning repeating a frustrating (and yet somewhat adorable) cycle where I’d lay her on her back in her crib, she would roll right away onto her belly, doze off on her stomach, then stir about 20 minutes later and realize she was on her face, panic, and then scream.

So after scouring the internet at 3am for a fix to this (what DID we ever do without the internet, seriously) my husband and I rigged up a blanket that was tucked into the crib mattress that we would place across her legs, low enough so her hands couldn’t find a way to yank it free. For bonus points, we rolled up a second blanket and placed it by her legs on the side she rolls over on (only one so far!).  After this, she SLEPT. This child looked so cozy, and her four-month regression issues with waking in the night for no reason pretty much evaporated with this. Fist bump. For now anyway.