The question feels like a judgment call. If he's not, then you MUST be doing something wrong. If he is, then you have the ever coveted "good baby".
So does Sam sleep through the night? I don't know. Sometimes. Sort of??
Sam "should" be sleeping through the night. After all, he has apparently reached the size and age where nighttime feedings are no longer necessary. Therefore, he should sleep through the night. The end. Really?
First, I don't actually know what "sleeping through the night" means. I asked the last doc we saw and he sorta made it sound like I was stupid for asking, like I was looking for a magic number of hours or something. But really, if you are trying to figure out the sleep routine and, dare I say, "sleep train" your child, how are you to know when to feed and when not to?
So I guess I have to take a step back and talk about Sam and his sleep.
Sam has always been a good sleeper. He takes naps and he sleeps at night. From very early on he liked to get long stretches of sleep at night -- he would wake to feed, but easily go right back to sleep. He did not think it was play time, just business -- food and sleep (a man after my own heart!!). One magical night around 3 months, he didn't wake up to eat. He just slept through the night. I was shocked and happy that it happened so naturally. Never did it happen again.
In the early days, Sam slept mostly in his crib, then I got more comfortable having him in bed with us, and then it sort of got to where he was in bed with us every night. I got to like it. He is my baby and I like being close. It also made nighttime feeding easier. Aaron and I do not have a regular routine. I'm not working (outside the home) and Aaron is in school and doesn't have to get up in the mornings. Parents without routine = baby without routine. I would watch Sam for queues as to when he was sleepy and ready for bed. Some of them are very obvious -- nodding off, rubbing his eyes, yawning. But a lot of times I don't notice until it is "too late" -- he starts to get really fussy or whining. It's harder for him to go to sleep like that. Sometimes he "crosses over to the dark side" and the fussiness turns into outright crying. At that point I would lie down in bed with him, hold his hand, snuggle close, and sing until he fell asleep.
Once he was a sleep, he would give like a four-hour stretch, followed by a three-hour stretch, then some more sleep after that. It was ok, but it wasn't progressing, and it was getting more and more to where I had to lie down and comfort him to sleep. I think it was because he was getting increasingly aware of his surroundings and would get too stimulated by things to fall asleep on his own, but I don't know.
I was never very unhappy with our sleep routines. Some days Sam got up earlier than I wanted. Some nights I had harder time getting back to sleep than others. But that is life, baby or no baby.
Anyway, then we went to the doctor and they said we should let him learn to "self-soothe" and that he did not need to eat during the night for any nutritional purpose. So, we decided to make the move. We had been planning to move Sam to his own room at some point. We just didn't know what the some point was. I was thinking it would be once Sam slept through the night. But then with the doctor's suggestion and other reading I'd done about how baby slept better in their own room, I figured we should go for it. Plus it's fun to set up Sam's room -- Sam's room!! It sounds so fun!!
I tried to start a bedtime of around 9:00. But Sam got tired earlier, so it became around 8 or 8:30. We would do a nighttime bath, change, and go to sleep. He then would wake an hour later, I would feed him, and he'd go to sleep. Aaron has been staying up until ungodly hours working on school stuff, so he would check on Sam if he started to stir and offer the pacifier or other comforts and Sam happily drifted back to sleep. He would then wake around 5 or 6 and I would get him and feed him and bring him to bed. This was our new routine as of like last week.
When I would put him to bed, half the time it would be hardly any issue, the other half we basically tried cry-it-out. Now, fuss-it-out was something that came naturally to us. Sometimes, particularly during the day, Sam would just be tired and super fussy so I would lay him down in his play pen and leave him alone. He would kind of kick and make little noises until he drifted to sleep within just a few minutes. Crying it out is difficult no matter how you came to doing it. Sometimes, you have no choice. You are at your wits end and you can't easily comfort the baby in your arms without screaming yourself, so you let him lie down and you take a breather. Sometimes, baby falls asleep during this. Sometimes he doesn't. I did consciously try to let him cry it out a few times. Tonight being one of them. I would leave him in his crib, he would begin to cry. I would wait a few minutes (arbitrary, not timed) and go comfort him, then leave again. He would cry for a few minutes. I would go comfort, then leave again. He would cry for like two minutes and then just stop. He had drifted to sleep. Probably not crying more than 15 minutes. So, I guess it worked right?
Anyway, I guess we are up to speed. So I'm writing this all out because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. Wait, yes I am. I'm SUPPOSED to stop worrying about all this stuff and just listen to my son and my gut and do what makes sense to us. Why is this so hard? Why do I constantly wonder how that baby sleeps and that other baby. Why do I keep wondering that if my baby isn't sleeping the way he's "supposed" to, I am doing something wrong? It's absurd the schools of thought that go to the extremes. I refuse to believe that if my child is crying and I'm not holding him or providing physical comfort, that he will lose faith in me and his fellow man. That seems very extreme to me -- what about all of the love and affection we share during the other 23 hours of the day? And I seriously question the notion of forcing a baby on to a strict day/night sleep routine, but I'm torn. I mean, without having a routine I enjoy sleeping during night and day, but I like being able to follow my body and sleep when I'm tired. Sometimes that's 10 pm, sometimes it's midnight, and so on. Wouldn't my baby be the same way? But there is always a question about instilling habits and routine, and at some point they are inevitable. But at 4 1/2 months?
Anyway I could probably go on and on. Really this was just inspired by trying to put my son to bed tonight. I gave him a bath (which I can't do every night because he gets really dry skin. So far aquaphor healing ointment seems really good -- opinions?) and got him ready for bed. Let him sit in his vibrating boppy and relax. But as soon as I put him in his crib he started crying. Now, he has started to really like his crib and fall asleep there easiest of all places. But not tonight. Took me a long time to realize that a frozen teething toy made him feel better, if only for a moment.
Anyway, this post has been interrupted by me doing a myriad of different projects, and also comforting my little one. I finally laid him down in our bed and let him play with my hair and he fell asleep. OH YEAH that's one of the super cute new things. He loves hair. During play time this can be rough because he had a good grip and likes to pull, but during sleepy time he gently runs his fingers through your hair. One of the sweetest things ever. Anyway, what I mean to say is that I've sort of lost my train of thought.
But what I do know is that I need to stop worrying about all the shouldas, and just do what works for us. We will inevitably not make the best choices all of the time. But we will work with it and it will be ok. And he is a happy, healthy, growing boy so something is working out. Plus it may really be teething pain that makes some nights difficult. We'll just have to see. So far the little white spot in his gums isn't growing and isn't necessarily obviously a tooth. But it sort of seems like all signs point to tooth. We'll see though.
Tomorrow I'll call the doc about the appointment with the surgeon, since i haven't heard anything. And then Tuesday Sam has his first road trip. We are going up to visit Dad for Thanksgiving. I hope it goes well! I'm a little nervous and feel like I'll be packing absolutely all of Sam's belongings for the trip, haha.
And if you made it through this long post, you deserve some new Sam photos:
2 comments:
My girl cries when she lies down too! She has since the beginning, though it took us about 6 weeks to figure out, that it was her 'method' for getting to sleep. We couldn't figure out why she would always scream at night no matter what we did - apparently, she just wanted us to leave her alone so she could sleep.
We had her in our room at the beginning, and she would wake up crying several times a night. A friend sent me 'Secrets of the Baby Whisperer' in the mail, and I went straight to the section on sleep. She only wrote the obvious, which is to observe your baby and respond to her needs (rather than the advice that comes at you from all sides as a parent). Plus, she gave some nice tips and general suggestions about babies and sleep.
I watched Clair that night, and noticed that every time one of us moved in bed or made any other noises, she would wake up (and the screaming would commence). All that time, I thought she was waking us up, but really, we were waking her up! She went into her own room that night even though we hadn't arranged anything but the changing table to that point.
She has slept so much better since then, but she still cries at bedtime, and as she gets older, her lungs are getting stronger. We have come to realize that she likes to be firmly swaddled in a dark, quiet room (no night lights) - she is a little like a mental patient in that way :-) I think she is just a light sleeper until she really gets into a deep sleep, and any stimulation wakes her. I think it is worse at night because she is processing all of the stimulation from the long day at that point. The crying can help to block it out.
I don't know if she 'sleeps through the night', but usually she goes for 7 to 9 hours stretches, and even then, she usually just eats and then goes right back to sleep for a few hours. We do that morning nap together in bed only because I don't do mornings well, and we both fall asleep during that feeding.
Tammy B, my daughter loved the same thing at bedtime as a young infant. She would only fall asleep if swaddled and left alone in her crib or bassinet.
I really think that doctors put way too much pressure on parents about the sleep issue. If the dr. can't even take the time to define sleeping through the night (5 hours, 6, 8?) then I doubt it is really anything so important. We had many changes in routine with E the first year and now at four years, she has no problems sleeping. She still takes awhile to settle in but I think that is more her personality than any lack of routine the first year.
I found listening to the baby's cues and listening to your own needs is much more important. If you are feeling resentful bouncing the baby on your hip for the fourth time that night, I doubt that it is going to be effective comfort anyway. Sounds like the cry, comfort, cry, comfort routine works well for Sam, so I would just go with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? :)
P.S. Love the pic of him "styling" your hair!
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