Sleep Training
11 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Everyday ish
So ever since Hanaa reached her 3 month mark, I’ve been attempting to establish some sort of a sleep/nap schedule. I’ve been trying to follow a bedtime routine more or less, in order for her to be able to sleep through the night and really know that it is time for bed etc. Needless to say, it has not been going so well.
In terms of a bedtime routine, most literature (re: mommy forums?) suggest the 4 B’s: Bath, Book, Bottle, Bed. Let’s analyze the 4 B’s and see just how it applies to our routine, shall we?
Bath – I give Hanaa a bath in the afternoon, usually after her morning nap. Why you ask? Simply because I feel that the evening gets a little chilly for her. Ever since Hanaa was home from the hospital, I’ve given her a bath in the afternoon (with the rare exception when she REALLY needed to bathe and it was later afternoon/evening). I do however, try to give her a massage with her night time lotion in an attempt to relax her and get her comfy for bed.
FAIL.
Book – This one I’m going to blame on my husband. Hanaa is what you call a tech-savvy baby. She loves her gadgets, DSLR, remote controls, cell phone and above all, her iPad. That’s right – HER ipad. She loves that thing. She is thoroughly entertained by the lights, sounds and ability to interact with the screen. Hanaa has two favourite apps. One is a piano for babies and the other is a called Baby Fingers. Because she is so highly stimulated by this gadget of hers, any book, regardless of the pictures, colours, size, textures, does NOT seem to capture her attention. Once i crack a book open, she’ll lean forward eagerly thinking its her iPad. She’ll tap the pages for a few seconds, move her little hands across the images but alas, she is not rewarded with the joyous sound of giggles, jingles and whistles. Soon enough, in under a few minutes, Hanaa is fidgeting on my lap and bored. I hope she doesn’t have ADHD. I feel like a terrible mother. *sigh*
FAIL.
Bottle – So this implies that we should feed the baby. Makes sense. I’m EBF at the moment so what this means for us is that I have to swaddle Hanaa up and lay down with her and feed her in bed otherwise, we are left dealing with screaming and screaching. Yeah – that’s Hanaa. At least this is the one ‘B’ that is actually being followed through.
SUCCESS.
Bed – Good Lord. As of right now, Hanaa has a bassinet that she starts off the night in. We have it placed beside our bed in our room so that we can get to her as needed through the night. Unfortunately this hasn’t worked out all that great. She will start off in the bassinet ONLY if she is placed in their when she is asleep (ie. she cannot fall asleep in it). Then, in about an hour or so, she’ll be up, screaming, wanting out and lo and behold, she ends up in our bed. In a way this is easier for me since she loves to nurse while sleeping and I can just nurse her laying down but with that said, it is a bad habit that we’ve allowed her to depend on being nursed to sleep and she hasn’t really been able to learn to self-soothe. Woops. =)
FAIL.
There is also some mixed evidence out there about the CIO (Crying it out) method of sleep training with infants. Essentially you let the baby cry for a short period of time, then go in to calm them down, then leave, letting them cry for a progressivly longer period of time, then go in to calm them again…and so on until they are able to fall asleep on their own. Apparenlty it can take 2-3 nights or even longer for some babies to be able to fall asleep on their own. I decided to try this out when Hanaa was 3 months old and was eager to have her sleep through the night in her crib (what was I smoking?!). In any case, initially I went in after 2 minutes of her crying, soothed her, left the room. Then after 4 minutes, then 6, then 8….. I think it took about 20 minutes or so before Hanaa fell asleep in her crib without further cries. I was so excited! I thought I did the impossible. That night Hanaa woke up 2 times – once to nurse and the second time just to be soothed back to sleep. The third time she woke up crying, I was so exhausted, I just picked her out of her crib and brought her back to our bed. =( The saddest thing about this was that she woke the next morning with a runny nose and cough. She must have felt too cold in her own room =( I felt terrible and haven’t tried that method since.
FAIL.
So all in all – Hanaa does well if she co-sleeps with us, which works for most days but she still struggles at times. It’s a LONG process I presume. I’m going to try to take it one day at a time and see how it goes. She just got her shots a yesterday so I don’t want to stress her out with sleep training again but maybe in a week or two (?).
We shall see, inshAllah.
Till then, I love her just the way she is. As long as she is happy and healthy – that’s all that matters. That’s such a Cliche thing to say but it’s true. *sigh*
Ok, she just woke up from her nap. Gotta go!
love,
FuZZy
