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| All swaddled and ready for bed yet wide awake at 11pm |
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| Still not ready to face the day...sound asleep at 11am |
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Levi seems to have his day and night hours a bit mixed up. He did really well near the end of his first week at home after we implemented a bit of a schedule, even giving us a 6 hour stretch of sleep one night. But no longer. We still have slightly longer periods of sleep during the night, but even these longer stretches are slightly off in terms of when they happen. For instance, I invite you to look at the first picture. Levi is all snuggled up, clean diaper, clean sleeper, full belly...should be ready for bed. Instead he is alert and happy as ever, ready to stare at some lights or high contrast objects for a few hours. We put him in his cradle beside our bed, turn out our light and, after a couple more night snacks, he falls asleep. On the average night, we (I) get approx 2-2.5 hour stretches of sleep (feeds every 3 hours or so) and are only up twice between midnight and 7am. But this is not enough sleep for mommy. I function well on 10 hours of sleep a night. Eight hours is do-able, but 7 hours with two interruptions is just not enough! That's where the other half of Levi's messed up schedule comes in handy! This boy may be a night owl, but his 3 hour stretches of sleep last well into the morning. Just like his mom, he is not a morning person! We usually bring him into bed with us after his 5 or 6am feed and he is out for most of the morning, only waking up for one feed between 8am and noon. When we can finally manage to wake him up after that, he is one content boy,
staring out the window while mommy gets ready for the day.
This routine, especially the morning part, mostly works for me because with my daily routine it doesn't really matter which hours I'm up and which hours I'm sleeping. But there are the occasional morning commitments that really get in the way of our blissful morning slumber. And these such commitments have me thinking that it would be much more practical to have the little man asleep earlier at night and rise earlier in the day. Any suggestions on adjusting a sleep schedule by a couple hours? I suppose we could try keeping him awake through the morning, but I am just so tired by then! Maybe that's just what I'll have to do, though, and be tired until the schedule has been successfully adjusted...
Update: Levi's rash (baby acne was the consensus) cleared up completely two days after my post about it. He is a clear-skinned baby once again! What did I do? Whether it cleared up on its own or not, I will never know, but I did try putting breast milk on it a number of times as per someone's suggestion and it started clearing up immediately. He is also nursing quite a bit better again...yay!
5 comments:
Those growth spurts sure are vicious, huh! Thankfully it all evens out again (for a while).
My advice for his schedule issues, is pretty simple.
Always feed him when he wakes, not when he's tired. So sleep, eat, play. Decide when you think it is an appropriate time for him to be awake. Feed him when he wakes up, then change him, play with his toes, whatever you can, to get him to stay awake for a while. At night, don't wake him, no matter how many hours he sleeps. When he does wake, change his diaper first, then nurse. I know some would say that you should put them down awake, but hey, they are so tiny at this point, and you are so sleep deprived, just nurse him to sleep during the night :) As long as you do it the opposite way during the day, he will gradually get the rhythm!
I agree with Stacey. That's the routine we did with them when they were very young (and still try to, but it gets messy sometimes) and it worked really well and seemed to help them figure out the difference between night and day. Also implementing a "bedtime" helped too so that they adjust to going to sleep at the same time every evening.
Oh Niki. Sleep deprivation is so tough. But somehow it becomes routine. You'll get the hang of seven hours with two interruptions (there are days you'll WISH for just two interruptions!)Somehow God always gives us what we need to get through each day.
Well I have no advice... but I wanted to comment because I can not get enough of Levi pictures! He is just so precious! I hope to meet him sooner rather than later!
Agree with Stacey's advice too! Our boy is 2 months now...we've had him on a 2 1/2 - 3 hour schedule since he was born. He eats (with the goal to get a good full feeding), is awake about 45-60 minutes (including the feeding time), then is put to bed awake. That's during the day, although when they're under a month it's hard to keep them awake after nursing but even awake for 5 mins after is good so they don't learn to depend on feeding to fall asleep. At night I just feed him until he falls asleep...or if he doesn't fall asleep nursing I just put him down, turn off the light and hope he falls asleep :-) Sometimes I have to go back in there and burp him and put him down again.
It takes a bit though to get them used to a schedule! Now at 2 months though he's sleeping 7-8 hrs straight...so it does get better.
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