The Quest for Sleep

Apparently Logan has slept through the night. According to the Baby Guru, Dr. Sears, sleeping through the night is a five-hour stretch. Unfortunately I continue to a have more extensive definition. I think most people do.

Here is a quick look at Logan's sleep pattens from our Trixie Tracking.

What a difference a month can make! He's gone from sleeping in three to four stretches and now has one long stretch of sleep and then tries to make it to 7:30am. Three things have contributed to this:

1. Eating more volume in the day every four hours (8,12,4,8) with some flexibility if needed

2. Bedtime is after his 8pm bottle: draw blinds, turn on white noise, bottle, pjs, 'Good Night Moon', cuddle, into bed sleepy but awake

3. Morning routine does not start until around 7:30, crib music can be turned on after 7 if needed but no more starting the day at 5am!

Here is how his bottles are working out...

You can see how when the feeding were sporadic in the day so were the feedings at night. After getting him use to the 'every four hours' thing, I slowly lowered the volume and frequency of the night feedings. He now has one small 'snack' around 3am which is being reduced so soon that will be out too.

However more tweaking is needed! Logan is put to bed when sleepy and knows how to fall asleep on his own. This is an amazing skill we have taught Logan as I have read of people having to drive their baby around in the car, having to rock them to sleep for an hour or babies who only want to sleep in their bouncy chair or swing. However he really relies on his soother to help him do this -especially now that he isn't being feed as much at night. The problem is now he needs us to pop his pacifier into his mouth when ever he wakes up and finds it is not there. He makes a fussy noise and if you pop it in he goes off to sleep in an instant; like he never really fully woke up. However if you let him be and hope he'll drift back to sleep the fussing escalates to a full cry and he's wide awake. Replacing the pacifier takes twenty seconds and the light doesn't even need to be turned on -however when it happens six or seven times every twenty to forty minutes I really don't get any sleep. Even if he falls asleep at his bedtime without a pacifier he'll wake up later and want it.

Hence this is the real problem -Logan is sleeping very well for a two month old but his mommy is not. I'm no fun when I'm tired -I'm grumpy and sometimes I take it out on my hubby. I'd rather take a nap then take us out to a playgroup. I'd rather drink coffee and watch daytime tv then go out for a walk. So I think the next struggle will be to phase out the pacifier. How do I do this? I have no idea. Dr. Sears says "If you have a baby who really needs a pacifier, then use it, don't abuse it, and quickly try to loose it' but don't go further on the loosing it. I'm not a fan of 'crying it out' so I don't think we'll do 'cold turkey'. I dunno. I could use some advice....