So Anna read my blog post last night and decided that she wasn't ready for a schedule and she was going to do things a little different. So last night after going through our bedtime routine around 9:00 - 2 books, 1 song, and a feeding - Anna fell asleep. However, she woke up with a wide-eyed look as I tried to move her to the swattle. (This has been happening a lot lately. Hence the reason I would like to try to get rid of the swattle.) So we read more books & sung more songs & ultimately Anna fell asleep at 10 - a little later than usual, but not that bad. Now because she was fighting the swattle again, I just left both arms out - hoping we could accelerate through mom's "get rid of the swattle plan."
Unfortunately, Anna then got up for the first time at midnight. I then fell asleep feeding her. I hate when this happens - you'll see why in a second. I woke up at 2:30, not knowing I had even fallen asleep, moved her back to bed (this time one arm swattled - acceleration plan was obviously not working) and went back to my room. I can't remember if I fell back to sleep or not, but Anna then got up at 3:00 (hence why I hate it when I fall alseep feeding her - it ultimately never leads to more sleep for me). She ate at 3:00 and when I moved her to the swattle, woke up again - wide-eyed. Ugh! I always tell myself that if she wakes up wide-eyed when I'm trying to put her down for a nap or trying to put her to bed for the night, she's not ready to go to sleep. But what the heck am I supposed to think at 3:00 am? At that point if she's not ready for bed, I'm never really sure what to do. I rocked her for a while. Then I just decided to put her in her crib and go rest in my own bed until she was really upset. I went back to my room - she let out 3 little fusses and all of a sudden - quite...and quite...and quiet. She fell back to sleep! Perfect, except that I put her down on her tummy. Now, while Matt & I have been letting her nap on her tummy recently (I know this is very frowned upon for safety reasons), we've never let her sleep on her tummy at night. So after listening to her breath on the monitor for a while and checking on her a few times, I fell sleep myself until...7:30 am!! What??? She ended up sleeping until 8:15, which is probably the longest single stretch she has slept in a while.
So my little story ends well. Except that Matt & I are now in a conumdrum about whether we should just move to the super accelerated swattle plan - in other words, no more swattle and just let her sleep on her tummy from now on. Oh, the choices.
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Oh the choices, indeed! Maybe a word of reassurance -- Anna's rolling over now, right? I think tummy sleeping is okay when the babies can roll ... (and mine always slept better and longer when on their tummies too! In fact, my mom thinks the no-tummy thing is nonsense! Not only do babies tend to sleep better, but they also won't choke when they spit up, which Mom is very concerned about. But I'm nervous about tummies too -- I never reveal to our pediatrician that I do it sometimes!)
ReplyDeleteI love your sleep-schedule posts! They remind me so much of the conversations Steve and I have!! You guys are such experts already!
I agree about the rolling. I kept hoping Anna would learn how to roll from her back to her tummy so she could just roll over on her own to sleep on her tummy, but she still hasn't done that yet. But she can roll tummy to back - so it does seem like that kind of strength makes tummy sleeping less risky (if it is risky to begin with, which sometimes I wonder about too.)
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