I bet Matt & I have been asked the question, "How does she sleep at night?" or "Does she sleep through the night?" by about 50 different people since Anna was born...relatives, friends, strangers on the metro. But it makes sense because isn't this a major goal of every parent of a new infant: getting the baby to sleep through the night.
First I would just like to consider the phrase, "sleep through the night." I think the phrase is misused when it refers to a single sleep consisting only of the few hours during the night when any "normal" adult would be sleeping. ("Normal" does not include college students or my brother Dan.) For instance, I don't think a sleep from 11:30 to 5 am really counts if the baby is up until 11:30 and wakes up for play time at 5 am. Sure plenty of "normal" people go to bed at 11:30 and plenty of "normal" people get up at 5 am (at least my mother would like to believe this), but no one who is going to bed at 11:30 is waking up at 5 am. Around 6 weeks of age Anna had a period of time where she was going to bed around 10 to 11ish and usually sleeping until 4 to 5ish, but that was the full sleep! At 10:00 she was on the coach with us (well, probably fussing as we rocked and swattled her) and at 5 am we were reading books. Except for her first week of life, I think this was actually the period of time where I got the least amount of sleep. Okay, so I know that given the statement I just made, I should NEVER complain about Anna's sleeping habits. I know there are tons of parents of 12 week olds who are celebrating their first 6 hour stretch of sleep in months. But the point here is not that I'm complaining anyway - just considering the sleeping patterns of sweet Anna and of infants in general.
The second thing I would like to consider is the sense of pride or failure that parents may feel based on their babies sleep habits. For the most part, I really think this is an unearned sense of pride or failure. I mean some babies are just born understanding night and day and sleeping well (luckily Anna was in this category) and some babies are just born all turned around, sleeping all day and up all night. Now I know that as babies get older there are definitely things you can do to help your baby sleep better and sleep when you want them to, but you can really only control this to a certain extent. This leads to Anna's recent sleep habits & all the silliness that Matt & I discuss surrounding this sleep. For instance:
Last Thursday night:
7:15: Mom feeds Anna and puts her to sleep
7:45: Anna wakes up
8:30: Mom feeds Anna and puts her to sleep again
9:00: Anna wakes up
9:30: Mom changes Anna, puts desitin on her butt, feeds her & puts her to sleep again - Anna stays asleep
Matt: "Ya know, she didn't get the Desitin on her butt the first two times you tried to put her to sleep. She must associate Desitin with going to bed"
Sarah: "Ya know, you might have a point there."
Okay, so maybe she really does associate Desitin with going to bed, but we're talking about a sample size of 1 and a trial size of 3. I don't think we've really discovered the secret of 3 month old sleep here, but we'll consider anything to fool ourselves into thinking we are in control. (Although I would like to add that on Monday of this past week we noticed Anna had a slight diaper rash so we decided to put Desitin on her at every changing. The first time we did it, she had an uncharacteristically long nap at an odd time - ha, ha, we really do have a discovery! Of course, if she really did have an association with Desitin, we certainly threw that routine out the window when we started using it all the time.)
So now to the original idea that spurred me to think about sleep - while Anna has generally been a great sleeper at night, she's recently has had a bit of a relapse. In the past week, she's only had two good nights of sleep and the other 5 nights has gotten up every 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours to eat (and last night not even just to eat, but to play too - ahh! It's so hard to ignore her sweet little smiles!) Of course the first thing we consider is, "What are we doing different? What have we done to cause this?" We were both relieved when Matt read on the internet that sometimes 3 month olds become so social that they start waking up often again (okay, for Anna this is more of a 1st time phenomenon, so I know, I know, no complaining). Yes - it's not our fault, it's natural? right - natural - She's social now so we didn't cause this (hopefully).
Anyway, I know that just like other trends, this will pass. And just as I do get sad that she never naps on me anymore, someday I will probably tuck her into bed and think back sweetly on our little encounters in the middle of the night and miss them.
Well, I should go. We haven't pushed much of a sleep schedule onto Anna at all (a whole other topic), but the one rule we do have right now is no sleeping past 7 pm - so I'm off to wake the sweet little sleeping Banana!
First I would just like to consider the phrase, "sleep through the night." I think the phrase is misused when it refers to a single sleep consisting only of the few hours during the night when any "normal" adult would be sleeping. ("Normal" does not include college students or my brother Dan.) For instance, I don't think a sleep from 11:30 to 5 am really counts if the baby is up until 11:30 and wakes up for play time at 5 am. Sure plenty of "normal" people go to bed at 11:30 and plenty of "normal" people get up at 5 am (at least my mother would like to believe this), but no one who is going to bed at 11:30 is waking up at 5 am. Around 6 weeks of age Anna had a period of time where she was going to bed around 10 to 11ish and usually sleeping until 4 to 5ish, but that was the full sleep! At 10:00 she was on the coach with us (well, probably fussing as we rocked and swattled her) and at 5 am we were reading books. Except for her first week of life, I think this was actually the period of time where I got the least amount of sleep. Okay, so I know that given the statement I just made, I should NEVER complain about Anna's sleeping habits. I know there are tons of parents of 12 week olds who are celebrating their first 6 hour stretch of sleep in months. But the point here is not that I'm complaining anyway - just considering the sleeping patterns of sweet Anna and of infants in general.
The second thing I would like to consider is the sense of pride or failure that parents may feel based on their babies sleep habits. For the most part, I really think this is an unearned sense of pride or failure. I mean some babies are just born understanding night and day and sleeping well (luckily Anna was in this category) and some babies are just born all turned around, sleeping all day and up all night. Now I know that as babies get older there are definitely things you can do to help your baby sleep better and sleep when you want them to, but you can really only control this to a certain extent. This leads to Anna's recent sleep habits & all the silliness that Matt & I discuss surrounding this sleep. For instance:
Last Thursday night:
7:15: Mom feeds Anna and puts her to sleep
7:45: Anna wakes up
8:30: Mom feeds Anna and puts her to sleep again
9:00: Anna wakes up
9:30: Mom changes Anna, puts desitin on her butt, feeds her & puts her to sleep again - Anna stays asleep
Matt: "Ya know, she didn't get the Desitin on her butt the first two times you tried to put her to sleep. She must associate Desitin with going to bed"
Sarah: "Ya know, you might have a point there."
Okay, so maybe she really does associate Desitin with going to bed, but we're talking about a sample size of 1 and a trial size of 3. I don't think we've really discovered the secret of 3 month old sleep here, but we'll consider anything to fool ourselves into thinking we are in control. (Although I would like to add that on Monday of this past week we noticed Anna had a slight diaper rash so we decided to put Desitin on her at every changing. The first time we did it, she had an uncharacteristically long nap at an odd time - ha, ha, we really do have a discovery! Of course, if she really did have an association with Desitin, we certainly threw that routine out the window when we started using it all the time.)
So now to the original idea that spurred me to think about sleep - while Anna has generally been a great sleeper at night, she's recently has had a bit of a relapse. In the past week, she's only had two good nights of sleep and the other 5 nights has gotten up every 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours to eat (and last night not even just to eat, but to play too - ahh! It's so hard to ignore her sweet little smiles!) Of course the first thing we consider is, "What are we doing different? What have we done to cause this?" We were both relieved when Matt read on the internet that sometimes 3 month olds become so social that they start waking up often again (okay, for Anna this is more of a 1st time phenomenon, so I know, I know, no complaining). Yes - it's not our fault, it's natural? right - natural - She's social now so we didn't cause this (hopefully).
Anyway, I know that just like other trends, this will pass. And just as I do get sad that she never naps on me anymore, someday I will probably tuck her into bed and think back sweetly on our little encounters in the middle of the night and miss them.
Well, I should go. We haven't pushed much of a sleep schedule onto Anna at all (a whole other topic), but the one rule we do have right now is no sleeping past 7 pm - so I'm off to wake the sweet little sleeping Banana!
I loved this post! Especially the Desitin part -- we totally do the same thing!
ReplyDelete