night night (an update)

i think it's obvious that one of the main

concerns and interests when you have a baby is sleep.

 

how much you're getting.

how much they're getting.

when they get up.

when they nap.

 

its the first thing people ask about.

even strangers.

and it was my main concern too

when i got pregnant.

just how tired was i going to be?

 

and, like you know, we got lucky.

a super sleeper.

she slept through the night under a month old.

yessssss.

but you also know that i have been

battling her with naps for months too.

its a give and take.

but i have two new updates on brette and her sleeping.

 

 

first, the naps.

early on i found that if i nursed her and held her,

she would sleep for hours.

but who has time for that everyday?

so i was trying e v e r y t h i n g under the sun

to get my baby girl to nap on her own.

 

i think we finally got it figured out.

brette was too tired by the time i was putting her down.

say what?!

i know.

i thought it was crazy too.

but when i visited marge she told me that her pediatrician

recommended babies sleep every 2 to 2.5 hours.

so that means, if b wakes up at 9:00am,

i should try putting her down between 11:00 and 11:30.

i mean, hello, i felt like she just got up from

12 to 13 hours of sleep.

there is no way she would be ready to go back down.

i was waiting until 1:00 to even begin to try to get her to sleep.

i just figured that since she was sleeping so late in the morning

we would skip a morning nap and head straight for the afternoon.

no bueno.

so i tried this new method.

and you know what?

it works.

around 11:15 i wrap her and put her in her swing

and she is sleeping peacefully within 10 minutes.

and she sleeps for an hour to an hour and a half.

holy cow.

then when she wakes up,

i wait another 2.5 hours and put her back down

and she sleeps for another 45 minutes to an hour.

no more battles.

no more holding her for hours.

i would have never guessed.

so its true: babies need lots of sleep.

but now, i feel like i am a little more confined to the house.

between feedings and naps,

there is no big span of time to get out and do things.

oh well.

like i said.

its a give and a take.

 

 

 

the second thing has to do with bedtime.

brette started to get fussy when trying to get her to sleep.

it was unusual.

normally, after i nurse her, i wrap her and hold her for a bit,

she drifts off to sleep and that's it.

but around 4 months old,

she started crying after we would get her wrapped.

at first i thought it was something ronnie was doing

when it was his turn to put her down,

but then she started doing it to me too.

it got so bad, that i finally just laid her in her crib

because she was so squirmy and crying in my arms.

when i laid her down she stopped crying

and drifted off to sleep.

whaaa?

i heard that around 5 months you are supposed to start

trying to put your baby down when they are kind of awake

to let them fall to sleep on their own anyway.

so that's what we decided to do.

nurse her, wrap her, and lay her down.

i guess she loves it.

no more crying.

and she's learning to sooth herself

and fall asleep on her own.

i feel like this is some sort of miracle.

i mean, what baby doesn't want to be rocked to sleep?

what a weirdo. (said in the best way possible)

its super simple and easy for us,

but i do miss rocking my baby to sleep.

four months definitely wasn't long enough.

 

bye bye baby.

hello, independent little girl.