Baby Sleep Part 2: Dealing with an overtired newborn!

In part 1 I dispensed my greatest piece of advice about baby sleep. I truly believe that relaxing about baby sleep is the key to a less stressed out Mama and Papa, especially in the early days when you are just trying to survive. Anyways, next up I wanted to talk a little bit about the issue of an overtired newborn/infant. I'm not sure the time cap on this little bit of "advice", since things are so new, we're only 4 months in after all!!

When we started trying to get Madeline to go to sleep earlier, we started also battling a little with her actually going to sleep. My instinct told me she was overtired, which is a vicious cycle because instead of falling asleep from exhaustion, babies seem to just scream and scream and be unable to actually do the thing they need the most when they are overtired. Sleep. So I decided to implement a sleep "regime". I became obsessed. I read that little babies should not be awake more than 1-2 hours at a time before going to sleep.

My plan was to do whatever it took to get her to sleep after she had been awake no more than 2 hours. In the early days she always fell asleep in the stroller, and in the car. So, every two hours, if I couldn't get her to nap by nursing or by putting her in her swing, I suited up and got out of the house with her. I know it's hard to believe, but on day one this made putting her to bed a million times easier. She was no longer overtired! Yay! I did this for weeks, it was a little exhausting because I was still in that place where I wanted to sleep when she slept, and if I was out pushing the stroller, or driving the car, I couldn't do that. Mama sacrifices though, right?

Eventually, around 8 weeks, Madeline no longer needed the movement to go to sleep, so I could nurse her and put her down in her crib at the 2 hour mark, which was such a HUGE milestone to me. I could finally get some stuff done around the house, and nap!!! Oh sweet naps. We have been blessed with a good sleeper though, I am not sure if she really falls in the realm of normal for her age. I am so so so grateful. However, I do think that creating a good nap plan can really help every baby. I hope that this might help someone that's reading.

I gotta say though, people don't like unsolicited advice (I certainly don't either!), so writing about this here is kind of therapeutic for me. I can advise, advise, advise, and not worry that people are annoyed :)

Baby Sleep Part 1! Learning to go with the flow...

Having a new baby is hard. Very hard. There are the sleepless nights, the screams and cries you can't quite seem to calm, the constant nursing, the constant baby bouncing... Shall I go on? When you are deep in the trenches it's so hard to see the other side, but eventually the clouds do part and you come out the other side, relatively unscathed. One of my biggest pieces of advice to new mothers is that you need to let go of the idea that you are going to have any kind of control over the situation (i.e. your baby). This is hard for those type A's out there, like myself, but I swear, once you accept that you have very little control things will start to get so much better. This was particularly true for us with Madeline's sleep.

Sometime around 3 weeks old, we decided Madeline should be going to bed earlier than her normal 11pm bedtime. We were both exhausted, and we wanted some time to ourselves before going to bed. I read about lots of babies who were going to sleep for the night at 8pm, why wasn't our baby doing this?? We started trying to get her to sleep earlier, we tried to establish a bedtime routine of bath, reading, swaddle, nurse, bed. However, it went more like this: bath, reading over her screams, swaddle, nurse, scream, nurse, scream, scream scream, nurse, bounce, scream, nurse, bounce, bounce, unswaddle, watch some tv, nurse, bed at 11pm. It was so awful and stressful. My husband and I hardly ever fight and we were arguing non-stop. No matter what time we started this routine Madeline went to sleep for the night at 11pm. Finally we just said screw it. She will do what she wants, and the stress was just not worth it. We started doing the routine more like this: bath, reading (although she still screamed while we read, she just wasn't into sitting and not moving at this age), go downstairs and take turns bouncing her around, nursing her when she showed signs of hunger, and then, finally, around 10 or 10:30 we swaddled her and put her to bed.

This new routine has caused so much less stress. We are all much happier. My husband and I have both accepted that we have virtually no control over the sleep situation at this point. Over time Madeline's bed time has gotten earlier, at 3 months she's going to bed some time between 9:30-10, with the occasional night at 9:15, or the unfortunate occasional night at 10:30-10:45. I am convinced that she will slowly get down to that coveted 8pm bedtime, so for now we are just following her lead.

I am definitely not a baby sleep expert, and I am sure there are lots of people out there who think I am doing it wrong. Maybe they think my baby is spoiled because we let her decide our bedtime, whatever. I really don't care because it works for us. Anyway, this is all to say that I certainly would not want to give anyone advice about baby sleep. I don't know how to get a baby to sleep better, longer, earlier, whatever. I have no clue. We have been blessed with a relatively good sleeper. However, I regularly dispense the "go with the flow" advice, because I really do think that can work well for everyone. In my very limited experience, babies don't do what you want them to do, so why spend all of your time trying to make them?

Stay tuned for Part 2, dealing with an overtired baby!