Discussion with husband re: how to spend “date night” tonight while my parents are babysitting the boy…
Me: Hot tub place or movie? Which do you prefer?
Him: I’m not going to say. I want you to decide. Just don’t obsess about it.
Me: That would be your preference?
Him: Yes.
* * *
Scott comes home from work, I’m in tears.
Him: What is it?
Me: The “Baby Whisperer” says I’m supposed to be able to put the boy down and have him fall asleep on his own. That I’ve been doing this all wrong with swaddling/rocking/jostling/humming him to sleep. That we’re going to regret this, that he’ll be dependent on it. But I tried her way and it didn’t work. And she says he has to be in a dark room. No noise. That we’ve essentially been putting him down to sleep in the equivalent of a shopping mall.
Him: I’m going to burn that book. Nothing good has ever come of it.
* * *
How do you DO sleep?
I like my Life Serial posts to have a certain style and rhythm (short, dialogue heavy) but I can’t let the Baby Whisperer book go into the flames without a little more discussion.
A few things positive I’ve gotten from that book:
Her EASY acronym (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You-time) — I use it like a mantra through my day to a) remind myself the boy needs to nap — something I didn’t “get” at first, and b) to at least *think* about getting to do something for myself.
“Tank him up” before bedtime — This we were already doing, or rather he was cue-ing us to do; theoretically if he eats frequently before evening sleep, he’ll stay down longer. Ditto the sleep-nursing — BW’s idea that he doesn’t have to wake all the way up in the night to nurse (and consequently neither do I). I haven’t been able to actually just put my boob in his mouth without disturbing him as he usually politely requests a diaper change, but the side-lying nurse-napping that we’ve been doing lately in the early morning hours seems to have salubrious effects for both of us.
What wasn’t soooooo helpful was the night, early in his young life, when we tried to decipher his miserable endless crying by using her various charts of body language, sounds, breath patterns, etc. Just couldn’t get it. Like trying to take the final exam without ever having attended the class and borrowing someone else’s cheat sheet an hour before to study.
How we DO sleep now:
9 or 10 a.m. ish: Sometimes in the morning he naps. This happens when he falls asleep after a nurse, or in the bjorn as I’m trying to get us out the door for an appointment/class, generally this nap occurs on his own, without my trying to make it happen. (For example, right now, he’s passed out on my lap after nursing. I’m reaching over his body to type on the laptop.)
From 11 to 1 or 2: Nap may or may not start in this window. Many days, this afternoon nap lasts for 2-4 hours. Many days, it doesn’t happen at all. If it doesn’t, he might do 4 hours from 5-9 instead. Or not. This daytime nap is usually assisted by me actively wrapping him up in a carrier, bouncing, and singing (alphabet song is my current favorite, but the capacity for the Cal Drinking Song to put him to sleep still amazes and entertains me). But then yesterday, he fell asleep on his own after nursing during yoga class, and slept right through going out to a restaurant with the grandparents for lunch (making up karmically speaking for yesterday’s midday pooptastic performance.)
4-7 p.m. : Might nap or not. Efforts to put him down usually yield about 20-45 minutes of sleep. Unless he’s been awake all day. Then he’ll sleep long enough for me to make dinner, but wake up in time to prevent me from comfortably eating it.
7-10 p.m.: Nurse frequently.
Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. — Goes to sleep, often after a good round of the rock/swaddle/sing/shooshing. Stays asleep 3-6 hours.
Middle of night — Up for diaper change, one hour of nursing, then back to sleep for 2 hours.
6 a.m. ish — side-lying nap-nurse, one hour.
After 7 a.m.: Playtime begins.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
(And all of this happens generally in a not-dark room, often with TV or radio playing. But Scott can fall asleep anywhere, so maybe the whole “shopping mall” thing is genetic.)
In writing it out like this, his sleep schedule actually sounds quite fine to me. Not sure now what I was worried about. Except maybe as he gets bigger, it might be nice to be able to put him down without all the rocking and bouncing…? Maybe I’m just looking for control again. An off switch. Something to make me a little less weighed down by the weight of him during the day.
I may take a look at the Babywise book, and No Cry Sleep Solution — I suspect these offer opposite views.
Or maybe I’ll just muddle along.
my advice is, decide what you want to do and then buy the book that says it’s OK
So whadja do? Hot tub or movie?
In my unsolicited opinion — do NOT read Babywise. If BW upset you with the stuff about falling asleep on his own and schedules — Babywise is 1000x worse.
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When I brought home Baby Whisperer from the library about six years ago, my husband turned very stern and said – whenever you bring home one of those books, there’s always trouble.
He pointed out that I would read the book and then obsess on trying to do “it” the book’s way, and then rage at him and the baby(ies) for not falling into line and responding the way the book (whichever book) said they ought.
So funny that your hubby has nearly the same reaction, and to the same book. Lord have mercy…
Fan of Babywise. Fan of Baby Whisperer. My mantra is to take whatever works from whichever source and roll with it. I’m one of four sisters, we all loosely follow the sleep/eat/play pattern for our eight kids, and it works for ALL of them – with very different personalities involved. Tough at first, but WELL worth it in the long run!
In my new-parent (I have a 5-month-old) VERY humbly offered opinion, Babywise is great for the feeding-schedule aspect of it, as long as you realize you have to listen to your baby just as much as you listen to the author (which he repeatedly says, actually). But I couldn’t hack the “put him down and let him cry it out alone” thing. It made me CRAZY. I recognized the value of him learning how to put himself to sleep, though. So I read Dr. Ferber’s “Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems”–which is good for lots of different sleep delimmas that might come up. In a lot of ways, he says a lot of the same things about sleep as the Babywise guy does, but in a “kinder, gentler” sort of way. It WORKED and since 12 weeks, my kid has fallen asleep on his own in 7 minutes flat, almost every time–and the times that he’s still fussing after 10 minutes, I know that he needs somethihng–usually a snack–and then he falls asleep. No other intervention on my part is needed. The bottom line, though, is you gotta do what you feel comfortable with, regardless of what the books and all well-meaning blog readers (i.e., me) say. Good luck! And I promise, it does get easier!!!
I don’t recommend Babywise:
Delayed growth, lowered milk supply (see case studies linked below) when breastfeeding, Failure to Thrive, attachment disorder, and other concerns have been connected with Babywise and other parenting materials authored by Gary Ezzo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babywise
Your son’s pattern is actually quite similiar to my 6 week old daughter’s, especially 4-7p
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Tammy — yes! LOL. Good advice.
And everyone else — thank you for sharing experience and for the encouragement. Am glad to hear what works for people and tickled when experiences match mine (Leila, Athena).
Haven’t cracked any new books yet…
Mayberry Mom: The hot tub place was booked so we went with movie.
Hey Calm Mama…yeah, the babywise got some bad reviews on its earlier editions from five or six yrs. ago. They’ve since changed their feeding schedules to be more towards the favored 2 1/2 to 3 hr. stretch. I hate hate hated having the babe cry herself to sleep. It took about a week of her crying from 0- 10 min. before naps and now she sleeps really well with no crying usually. I really needed her to sleep on her own because I am a licensed childcare provider in my home and have up to three other children around. (Yep, it’s crazy!) It’s been a relief to have her fall asleep happy and wake up happy. I remember her falling in to a more predictable schedule around 2 1/2 months..that was helpful. Now…if I could only learn that potty training trick of yours….amazing
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EXACTLY the same reaction that my husband had. Too much pressure to adhere to a strict schedule when we are trying to figure out what the heck to do! I hope you had a great date night!!
Hey susie– Your post made me think… I don’t hear from a lot of moms about what works *instead* of letting babies “cry it out” or ferberizing, or whatever.
We may get there, and if we do, I will surely write about it. So far, we’re still rocking the boy. It’s possible that my being SAHM and having the time and willingness to do it this way is part of why we continue on this path, for now.
That potty stuff was amazing, I agree! But it’s been a while since that happened and we haven’t had an in-toilet “catch” since, though the sssss-ing with pees on the changing table, we still do. I’m what they call a very “part-time” EC-er. I don’t think I have it in me to be any more rigorous than that.
And Betsy: THANKS! We did. (See next post.)
With my son we rocked him to sleep until he was about 2 months old. It eventually didn’t work as well as for us — he’d wake up soon after we put him down and it would take forever to rock him over and over to get him to stay asleep. So after talking to my mom and my sister, we went with crying it out. Like Susie, I hated it. It was awful. But it worked for us. Crying it out at night went much faster — took a while longer for the naps during the day.
I am a muddler – I admit it. I could not stomach letting either of my kids “cry it out”, nor could I stomach reading books that gave me schedules and checklists – I was just too darn tired for more details! My first born (now almost 5), never slept for more than 1 hour in the early days. After struggling through this for a couple months I did *gasp* unthinkable: I put her in her crib on her tummy. And she slept for 4 hours. She hated being swaddled, hated blankets, hated co-sleeping, hated her carseat, hated laying in the stroller, and would flail her arms whenever placed on her back or side and wake herself right up. She was a tummy sleeper from that day forward. She still didn’t sleep through the night until she was 18 months old (when Baby 2 came along), and her sleep cycle to wake up around 3 a.m. was a real drag as she wouldn’t go back to sleep in her crib/bed but wanted to sleep in the chair on me. The baby (now 3 1/2) was a better sleeper from the start. And somewhere along the way, it became more common for me to spend a whole night in my own bed. My points are this: (1) Hang in there – you will live through the sleep deprivation!; and (2) There is plenty of guilt to go around with motherhood, so don’t go searching it out by reading books that make you feel bad about yourself. Your boy is healthy, he’s growing, and you are loving and nurturing him. Hurray and good for you!
I found your site through DaMomma’s meme; and I just wanted to say that your Little One’s routine sounds fine to me. Similar to mine. Mine is 11 weeks old tomorrow, and is usually nursed to sleep. But has gradually slept more and more on his own – ‘put him down and walk away and he’s happy to stay asleep’ type of thing. And gradually got happy to wake up on his own, too. So all these baby books that talk about ‘rods for your own back’ if you don’t do it their way I reckon are just phooey. We have a happy baby, and it works for us. Only look for new advice if it *isn’t* working for you, I reckon.
I’m with Sarah, I’m a muddler. I tried the crying it out, but that didn’t work for us as my boys can cry for HOURS. My littlest still has to nurse to fall asleep. This is our only nursing session, and I am ready to wean him, but I am just looking for a cue that he may be ready to be without the boob. I say this because, with my oldest, weaning him did the trick. Sure it wasn’t until he was 18 months, but I lived.
The books just aggravate me which is why I don’t read any parenting books any more. I find that their most useful information is stuff I figured out on my own or through friends. I also question their research. Who are they researching? How was the data collected? Etc. Babies are just sooo different.
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Well, that’s it! I’m a muddler.
Thanks NMN and Sarah and Gillian and Leanne. These stories are really a balm for me! I do get so easily swayed into thinking I’m doing something wrong. Tra la la. That’s my brain for you. It’s so true that every baby is different. I forget that a lot too.
Last night, at 8:30p.m., Jonah fell asleep on his own, just lying on the bed between me and Scott while we were watching TV. And he slept in his bassinet till 1:30a.m.. And slept again from 2:30 to 6. Woo hoo! And he’s napping in the bassinet now (8:40 a.m.)! Hooray for small victories on any given day.