Saturday, November 17, 2012

The No-Cry Sleep Solution Log: Day 40--What in the World?!?

The past week of sleep has been crazy. What is this kid up to? Is he dropping his one nap? He's too young for that, isn't he? Am I letting him sleep too late? Is he working on something developmental, like talking, so he's just too excited to sleep? Is it teething? Is he sick? Why can't he tell me what's going on????? Argh!


Quinn has kept us guessing this week. He definitely had teething pain for a while but then he seemed to come out of it and even put himself to sleep all by himself for a nap. I was delighted...but then he decided he didn't really need naps anymore. He would either take a very late nap or not nap at all. When he did nap, he would go to sleep very late and then sleep in in the morning. His night sleep hasn't suffered (more than normal), so I can't complain too much, but we've gotten way out of any sort of standard schedule. The insanity may be over but I don't think it is...

The best answer I can come up with is that he is going through a mental leap in development. I knew one was supposed to be coming up and I wondered if it would mess up our sleep work. I guess I was right. It's frustrating but not quite as bad since I know a bit of what's going on thanks to a wonderful book call The Wonder Weeks. The Wonder Weeks is a book based on years of research on babies' development. The researchers found that babies tend to go through predictable mental "leaps" at certain ages. These mental leaps create all sorts of havoc in the babies' equilibrium as they work on sorting out all the new things they're learning. They have been pretty dead-on for Quinn and I highly recommend this book to new mothers. I just wish I'd had it when Aurora was a baby!

Anyways, now that I've ranted about confusing baby sleep stuff, here's where things have gone right:
-Quinn had been going to sleep very easily. I was almost ready to start changing how he goes to sleep (me laying down next to him) to work on him being more independent on going to sleep.
-He has started communicating when he wants to be put to sleep. We often have a couple false starts (tonight he asked to go to sleep 3 times before he finally did do it), but it's nice that he's beginning to recognize that.
-He also communicates when he isn't ready to go to sleep. Of course, him jumping around on the bed might be a dead give-away, but not always. We just have to ask him to give us his pacifier if he's all done with going to sleep and he'll hand it over. Then he goes to the end of the bed and bounces up and down until we carry him out.
-All pacifiers except the one connected to the lion lovey are limited to the bedroom.
-The lion is becoming a favorite. He might even be trying to talk about it. "I-en" sounds pretty close to me! :) He also is starting to remember to grab the lion before he asks to go to sleep.
-He's been restless at night, but he's only been truly waking up and nursing around 3 times a night. Once I can get used to his wiggling without truly waking, then we'll (I'll) be sleeping pretty well.

How I want to change things:
-Get Quinn to fall asleep while I'm in the room but not next to him.
-Have a more regular, quieter bedtime routine.
-Figure out how to get Quinn to sleep more quietly at night (or me to sleep more soundly...)
-Get Quinn napping again...or doing quiet rest time or something.
-Eventually ditch the pacifiers and night time nursing but we'll work on those later.


So how did we sleep last night? Pretty well! Actually, I think it's the best night we've had in months!

Day 40 Sleep Log Summary

Nap: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Last time: 1 hours, 45 minutes
Night time sleep: 10 hours, 10 minutes
Last time: 11 hours, 30 minutes
Wakings: 2 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Last time: 8

Total sleep per day: 11 hours, 30 minutes
Last time: 13 hours, 15 minutes

However, since he napped, he went to bed late and is lacking about 1.5 hours of sleep that he "should" have (kids his age should have 13-14 hours of sleep per day). He only awakened TWICE but he did wiggle enough to wake me two other times. Even still, that was an excellent night. If only we can combine the regular schedule of two weeks ago with the good sleep of tonight, then we'll be set! :)

~Regina

Find all my No-Cry Sleep Solution Logs here!

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