Just because we worked out how to get her to sleep doesn't mean we know how to keep her asleep! Up until three weeks ago, this wasn't really an issue as she was sleeping, unlike many her age, up to a nine hour block at night most nights. Shortly after turning three months old this deteriorated, and at one point last week she was waking hourly from 2am to feed. A few friends of ours have had babies with serious sleep problems. Because of this, Murray's initial response to this was 'Oh no! We need to do something!' My initial response was meh. I'd read about the three to four month old changes. I knew that Etta was just hungry and that she still had a very good grip on the difference between night and day - she was just waking for food and was settling straight back into sleep afterward. Yes, it is annoying, yes it is hard and yes, I am an overtired, horrid bitch, but we just have to get through it.
After almost three weeks of little sleep and Murray not feeling heard because I refused to acknowledge a 'problem', I called Plunket Line. And (surprise surprise) I was right. Babies this age go through lots of developmental changes and just need more calories. And with brain development comes a more easily distracted baby - so often they aren't feeding properly during the day. The lovely Plunket lady said they get about five calls a day about sleep changes in babies Etta's age - it's completely normal.
And although I can't say I'm happy with this change, I'm happy to know that my baby is developing as she should, and that we are dealing with this change as we should. It's a good reminder that babies are consistently, if nothing else, changeable. It never pays to be smug about anything in baby land, cos the next day it's highly likely that thing will no longer exist.
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Ha ha! I wrote the above about six weeks ago... It's amazing how quickly everything changes! After a few more weeks of Etta's crazy sleep thing I was going insane (hence long time no blogging). And surely she should have grown out of it by now? She was coming up to 20 weeks and that seemed too old for such nonsense.
Our friend who's son had sleep issues had forwarded us all her 'sleep program' notes - I decided it was time to actually read them. Her program was designed specifically for her son, so I just took the parts of it that seemed to make sense to our daughter and situation and started putting them in place.
Despite being great at using the 'controlled cry' method to get Etta to sleep, we weren't using it consistently through the night. I just assumed she was hungry, got up, and fed her. I also was trying my best to be super Mum (and let Murray sleep) so was getting up as soon as she made a noise. I decided to work on those two things and see what happened.
We decided (based on her weight) that she might still need two - three feeds over night, but made a new rule not to give her a second feed after bedtime until at least 10pm*, and subsequent feeds four hourly. I started leaving her to make noise for 5 minutes before I initiated feeding - or if at a no-feeding time, our normal settling routine.
We also have a baby that has from six weeks, very rarely, napped for longer than one baby sleep cycle (45 minutes). I started leaving her for 5 minutes (like at night time) to grizzle before getting her up, and if she was awake but not crying, leaving her for 20 minutes in case she would resettle to sleep.
These were easy things for us to do - but what a HUGE difference they made! I was just being hyper vigilant after Etta went through her three month growth spurt. Etta often just cries a little between sleep cycles, but she goes back to sleep straight away. I didn't know this because I'd never given her a chance to self settle. Such a simple thing, but such a massive difference - I felt like such an idiot! The first night I think I fed her once at 11pm and again at 4am - and didn't have to do any controlled cry back-to-sleep things at all. And she started having one 'proper' (over an hour) nap a day. It was amazing!
We're almost four weeks in to the sleep changes now and things have changed again. Etta has stopped properly napping most of the time (I think she worked out what I was doing). So I just leave her the amount of time I'd like her to nap (1 hour), even if she's awake to try and encourage proper napping. It might work one day... I'm still working on getting her down to three naps a day consistently - it happens sometimes, but mostly she's still needing four naps. I haven't had to feed her more than twice overnight AT ALL since I made these changes - and there are only a few nights we've had to use controlled crying to get her back to sleep - she usually self settles just fine.
Our next big sleep challenge will be Etta going into her own room at night. We are napping her in there now to get her ready, but she has to move soon as she is WAY too big her for bassinet now. Wish me luck! I'll let you know how it goes...**
* Apparently overfeeding in the evening can cause them to wake in the wee hours more often.
** I'm sure she'll cope fine, just not sure if I will.
