Yay! I haven't done this in a while and today is backwards day - meaning I ask a question and people leave me comments!
So, I have a couple of baby questions I've been wondering about.
For those of you that don't know me, I'm Allison - a brand new mommy to Jenna who will be 8 weeks tomorrow.
I'm wondering when I can fully expect her to start sleeping through the night. Right now, she has only been waking up one time which I think is still pretty good, but I'm ready for a full 8 hours! Any tips on how to get them to sleep through the night and what age can I expect this?
Also, when should I start giving her the rice cereal?
Thanks so much! :)
19 comments:
Congratulations on your first baby! My third is now 10 months old and starting to walk. "Sleeping through the night" per the experts is only 5 hours at a stretch. She won't be and shouldn't be sleeping 8 hour stretches for a long, long time. Even if she does start sleeping well, it goes in phases. All of my children start waking a lot when they go through growth spurts...physically or mentally. Just as I'm feeling like I'm going to lose it, I realize that they just grew out of their clothes, just got new teeth, or just learned to do something new. During these times, they may need extra feedings, extra love, may be in pain, or their brains just are on full speed. Go with the flow and get naps in when she naps so you aren't as tired. Letting the baby sleep with you so you can nurse in bed REALLY helps with sleep deprivation. I never really have that problem in the early days and it helps later when they are waking more than a newborn does. My 10 month old currently wakes and nurses 1-2 times a night. My six year old still has occasional night waking issues also (night terrors).
Rice cereal (or any other food) shouldn't be started until the baby is sitting up well with only a little support (around 4 months) at the very earliest. It is best to hold off until the baby is making it clear they want food. You'll know because she will start watching you eat every bite and trying to get your food and put it in her mouth. THAT is when she'll be ready for it and when it is safest to start cereals and stage 1 foods.
Mine started sleeping through the night at around 4 months. He is on a set routine and goes down at 8 every night. He wakes up around 7-7:30 in the morning. He gets 2 hour long naps during the day. Daycare helps to tire him out a lot and I notice he doesn't sleep as well when he has been at home during the day for a long streach of time like over Christmas break. One thing that is key is making sure he is full when he goes down or he will wake up hungry at 3 am. I started feeding him cereal at 6 months old. He gets cereal and veggies/fruit about 1-2 hours before bed then an 8 oz bottle right before I put him down. This has been our routine since he was 6 months old and he is now 11 months.
I agree that cereal should wait until your baby is 4 or 5 months old. I agree, you'll know when she starts to WATCH you eat.
As far as sleeping through the night, GOOD FOR YOU that she is only waking up once. Let her do that for a while longer, then when you think she's just doing it out of habit rather than need for food - you can try to let her cry for a few minutes before you pick her up. Then just pick her up and hold her and cuddle w/ her and lay her down. Don't feed her. See what she does. She just might fall back asleep.
If this doesn't work then your baby is still in need for more feedings and don't push it. I know you are ready for 8 hours, but she might not be. It's good that you are trying to get her there. There's no sense in a 12 month old waking up thru the night, but 8 weeks can be a little early.
Hang in there - before you know it this phase will be gone.
ha! My 9 month old is just starting to get the sleeping through the night deal. My 14 month old nephew stuggles even more. Sorry. I'm so tired I'm about to cry. :) What we're doing to help my son to stop needing food through the night is gradually weaning the milk he gets - watering it down in a bottle and having my husband give it to him instead of me nursing him. It seems to be working, but it is still exhausting.
Rice cereal: 4-6 months, but when your little angel seems really interested in what you're eating, or looks like she's practicing when she sees you eat, I think that's a good indicator of readiness.
Good luck!
Sleeping through the night also depends on whether baby is breast fed or formula fed. I wasn't able to breast feed, and my girlie started sleeping through the night (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) at ten weeks. Since she was growing well, I didn't worry about waking her to feed her, I just relished the quiet time!
how exciting that you have a brand new little one! mine is 7 months old. just when you think they can't get any cuter, they do. so enjoy it.
i remember when mine was around 8 weeks, i was DESPERATE for sleep and so i started asking around like you are because i had to get him sleeping all the way through!
i realized that tho my friends gave me advice (which i will give you in a minute) about getting mine to sleep through the night, it's highly unusual, as your other commentors have said, to find moms whose babies sleep through the night under a year. dont be discouraged by this...it can be done!!
mine started sleeping through the night around 8-9 weeks. he started sleeping for about 7-8 hours and it has lengthened until he now sleeps 12. so keep at it!!
first i would ask you to notice if your baby is waking at the same time every night. if he or she is, then it's highly likely they're in a rut and waking at that time not because they need to, but because they are used to it. mine's time was 3 am. he would eat at 10 then wake at 3. so i started feeding him at 11 or 12 and then when he still woke up at 3, i knew he didn't need to eat, and could cry it out. now it is hard, very hard, to let your baby cry it out in the middle of the night. i know. it's so easy to rationalize picking him up. but if you can, don't. get up and watch tv. or do something. and let him or her cry. it only took 2 or 3 nights of crying for 15 min. or so before mine stopped waking up.
another thing which helped a lot is having a bedtime routine. something you do at bedtime every single night. for me, i massage mine before his pj's are put on. that way he knows, when he gets the massage, that it is bedtime and time to sleep all the way through the night. i gave mine the massage at his 8 or so feeding, since that was when i wanted him to sleep through the night from, at some later point. then when i would wake him for that later feeding, like at 10 or 11, he would go right back to bed after it. i chose a routine which i could take anywhere and anyone could do. that way i could go someplace, take his packnplay, give him a massage, and he would still fall asleep. and it works! both my mom and my mother in law have also been able to put my son down for the night, as long as they did the massage. so try a bedtime routine.
ok this has become a novel. please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions :)
happy sleeping!!!
also on the rice cereal, wait on it. wait until they aren't sleeping through the night anymore, assuming they once were, before giving them the cereal. then you will know that they need it. for mine, he started oatmeal once a day when he was 3 1/2 mo. old. it was early but he had stopped sleeping through the night. other than that, tho, mine didn't really eat food other than cereal until close to 5 mos or so. that's a whole other story :) but for now just concentrate on sleep!!
Tyler started sleeping all night around 8 weeks. However, Landon was closer to 4 months!! So really there is no way to know how long it will be!! But Landon also took naps during the day and Landon didn't!! They were complete opposites. On the rice cereal I waited with both of them until they were 4 months. People kept telling me to put cereal in their bottles to help them sleep but I read a lot of the baby books and asked my peditrician and they both said NO. I cannot believe that Jenna will be 8 months old tomorrow!! Landon will be one in a few weeks. I cannot believe it. We just got home last night so I am catching up on your blog. I love all the pictures!!
Pretty much what everyone else says is what I have to say. Joann was right..."Sleeping through the night" is only about 5-6 hours at a stretch. It's annoying, but it's just part of it!
We waited until our little one was about 5.5 months old to start solids. We didn't even have a high chair yet, so we just used the Bumbo Seat. It worked perfectly. We started with Rice Cereal, then Oatmeal, then the dark veggies (Green Beans, peas etc.). We did fruits last.
Don't rush the food though. We held off until she started trying to intercept my fork on the way to my mouth! We figured it was time then.
They still live in White Hall. We moved there when I was a Jr in High School. I think in a couple of years they will move to north AR. Is your mom still in PB?
We started with rice cereal around 4-5 months I think it was...as for sleeping through the night be patient! It will happen! My little guy is 11 months old. I would highly recommend the book "Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child" if you would like more info on it. I read MANY books on sleep for babies and that one was my favorite and the most helpful to me.
I haven't slept for 8 hours in a row in ten years.
But...*I* have adjusted. It's not as hard to get up in the night; also, I don't hesitate to put baby in bed with us for a nursing and we both go right back to sleep.
Hold off on the rice cereal until her tongue-thrust reflex goes away. This is a reflex that causes babies to push anything you put in their mouths right back out. 4-6 months is the recommended age.
If she's only waking 1 time a night, you're doing great! My son still sometimes doesn't sleep through the night & he's 2 1/2!
Don't try any solids until 4-6 months.
Congrats on the new arrival! My little one is almost 9 months old, and she started consistently sleeping through the night around 7 to 8 weeks (lucky me!!). The trick for us was to establish a consistent 3 to 4-hour cycle of feeding/awake/sleep time, and to follow a consistent "sleepy time" routine utilizing swaddling and a white noise machine. A good rule of thumb for how long a stretch of time a baby can sleep is 1 hour for each week old the baby is (assuming the baby isn't a preemie), meaning an 8-week old should be able to sleep an 8-hour stretch. If you haven't already checked out "Happiest Baby on the Block," this is where we got the idea for establishing this routine.
We started by picking a set time for our girl to start her day--for us, 7 a.m. worked. I'd wake her up to feed her (or if she woke up before 7 a.m., I'd give her a paci to hold her over). Would feed at 7 a.m. (I nursed exclusively--our girl has yet to have a drop of formula!) and then keep her awake until she started showing signs of getting sleepy (yawning, rubbing her eyes, etc.). This is usually going to be anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours after the feeding begins. It's very important to have this "awake" time follow the feeding, rather than vice versa.
Once the baby starts acting sleepy, start your sleepy time routine (note, too, that it's important not to delay in getting the baby to sleep once she starts getting tired--otherwise, you'll miss your window, and the baby will awaken early from naptime due to being overly tired). For us, it consisted of wrapping her in a tight swaddle (as directed in Happiest Baby), singing the same song to her, turning on the white noise, then rocking her for a minute or two before putting her down to nap. We started off rocking her until she was asleep or semi-asleep, and then worked our way back so that we'd eventually (after a few days) put her down awake to fall asleep on her own.
The nap should last 1.5 to 2 hours, and then you start over again. Continue this 3-hour feed-awake-sleep cycle until 10 or 11 p.m. (although many babies don't nap well during the 4-6 p.m. cycle), and then put her to bed for the night. During these early weeks, I highly recommend having your husband stay up with the baby and do the late night feeding so that you can get a couple extra hours of sleep in :)
It's important to be consistent in this routine at first so that your baby becomes conditioned to respond to certain sleep cues. As the baby gets older, you can be more flexible and adjust to meet your baby's changing sleeping and eating needs (e.g., your baby may be able to go 4 hours between daytime feedings around 14 to 15 weeks; you may start day care at 12 weeks, which will affect your daytime routine; you may transition the baby from a swaddle blanket beginning around 12 weeks).
We're not normally very rigid schedule people, but this really did help our girl become conditioned to know when it was time to go to sleep, and gave us all some predictability for knowing when we could plan on having to feed and nap (which, in turn, allows you to plan for a trip to the store or other outing!). It also helped me to manage my milk supply, and has really laid a great foundation for our daughter to have good sleep habits. Now, at 9 mos., she goes to bed at 6:30 p.m., I wake her up at 10 p.m. to nurse her, and she sleeps until 6:30 a.m. She goes to day care, and usually take a couple 1-hour naps during the day.
That's probably WAAY more detail than you ever wanted, but it really worked for us. Good luck!
Congratulations! Don't read my WFMW post--it'll freak you out! I'll just tell you what worked for me with my first child. He slept for six hours at a stretch while we were still at the hospital! The nurses and lactation experts kept bugging me to wake him up and feed him. I had only been a mommy for a few hours but I knew better than to wake a sleeping baby! I fed him when he was awake and let him sleep as long as he wanted to. Within 6 weeks he was sleeping for 12 hours at a stretch, plus napping on me (fell asleep nursing) for 30 minutes to an hour several times a day. Hopefully your first will be that easy!
For rice cereal, I never gave it to either of my children. Rice is pretty much a big fat zero nutritionally. They do add in lots of vitamins and iron to baby rice cereal--it's not bad for them by any means! I used steel cut oatmeal for my babies--I'd pulse it in my food processor for a big batch or an extra coffee grinder for one use and it cooked up instantly with boiling water. I'm so not worried about fortifying my kids with iron, fluoride, etc. I choose whole foods and fruits and veggies and avoid refined sugar when possible and trust God's work to work! Best of luck to you! Motherhood is fabulous :)
Congrats Allison!
My 4 were all sleeping 12 hours, 6-6 or 7-7 by 4 months old. Some were sleeping all night at 7 weeks, some not. 3 out of 4 got stuck waking at 4am and I had to let them cry it out at 4am, when they were 4 mos old.
Most babies can't go all night till they weigh at least 12 pounds.
The best thing you can do to encourage it is to have her on a 3 hour eating schedule during the day. During the day, don't let her fall asleep after eating - keep her up a little bit so she is on a eat-play-sleep schedule. But not at night, at night, eat in the dark and back down.
A WONDERFUL book, this is like the sleep bible for moms, is called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weisbluff. He tells you how much kids need to be napping at every stage, even through adolescence. This book is worth it's weight in gold.
Feel free to email me or comment on my blog if you have any other questions!
Oh rice cereal -
My daughter had reflux so we started putting it in her bottle very early, at like 6 weeks. But most babies, 4-6 months when they lose their gag reflux. It won't help her sleep through the night, if that is what you are thinking!
I always start with oatmeal cereal too, as rice constipates my babies.
My youngest is 15 months... she still wakes more than your baby at night. My oldest is 5... he still crawls in my bed in the middle of the night. Count your blessings! :)
When my 1st was born the Dr's told me 3 months or 10 pounds - whichever comes first... thats when they would be able to sleep through the night. All babies are different. Hang in there. :)
The advise about eat-play-sleep and the advise about The Happiest Baby on the Block are the same things we did with our twins. They were sleeping 6 - 8 hours at a time 4 out of 7 nights by 12 weeks.
I nursed them and our ped told us not let them cry it out until after they were on solids at 4 months. I think I actually counted down the days until I could start solids.
About a month after they began solids, they were sleeping 10 - 12 hours a night most nights.
We worked hard to develop a schedule and then we stuck to it. We "practiced" teaching them how to fall asleep during naptime so they would know how to fall back asleep if they woke up at night.
Between 3 and 4 months, we would let them cry for 15 minutes before going to get them out of the crib. Many times, they would cry themselves back to sleep before the 15 minutes were up. If not (since I had not started solids), I nursed them and put them back down. Once I started solids, my husband would take care of them so they learned that their was no more food at night. It really only took about 1 - 2 weeks of doing this for them to stop waking in the middle of the night.
Post a Comment