Waking up is hard these days.
I’ve recently started doing a proper sleep training with him which means I’ve now joined the early-bird-moms! I am NOT a morning person………. But I think when the reason of getting up is one extremely happy baby who just wants to play, then it’s not too bad, he makes me smile even if I can’t properly see him because my eyes are still half closed or just incredibly blurry.
I’ve tried to have a routine with him since week 5 and tried to have Gina Ford’s 7pm-7am timings as a base except we never went to bed at 7 and I could never start a day at 7 Just because I was too tired to get up, so we used to sleep until 9 or even 10 at times. Of course with feedings in the middle. However, the older he got, the less this “lie in” routine worked. He wouldn’t sleep long anymore lunch time, morning nap was unachievable (because we got up too late!!) And the late afternoon nap was at times from 5pm which would only make him grumpier because he would just be confused and angry when I’d wake him and wouldn’t understand why does he need to stay awake again. Too close to bed time that was! And sometimes he refused to have his afternoon nap and ended up staying awake for like 4 hours! This is not okay. FYI – he is now 4m3w, so shouldn’t stay awake that long.
This is when I realised I need to tweak the timings and do something about his sleep. I know that they go through that sleep regression phase this time but things were just not working and I needed a proper guide.
I had seen an ad on Facebook for Little Ones and I just wanted to believe it worked. Also, my little one cannot self soothe at all and that’s a problem. I can’t be rocking him anymore because my back just won’t take it. So before I even got the program I watched couple of their videos online and there was this one for side settling and it worked so well! I can now pat his butt like that even in the middle of the night and he would calm down.
I won’t talk too much about the program but what I like about it is that they give you these great guides that say how long should babies stay awake according to their age, how long they should nap etc. Because if you let one of these things go wrong you’ll either end up with an overtired or under-tired baby and we all know what that means – shit naps and shit night time sleep! So yeah, I have found it very helpful.
And like I said, because we have followed a very similar routine from early on, then basically now we’re doing the same thing except we’re doing it right and it’s only day 4 and his naps have been so much better, especially the lunch time nap because that’s the one that matters the most.
The only thing now is for him to learn how to self soothe and as it stands I have no idea how we’re gonna do this. Even in the Little Ones guide they say babies learn to self soothe between 3-4 months. Well, not my baby! However, given his reflux I always have had to hold him upright after a feed, so he’s used to falling asleep on me. And I think until he gets rid of this problem we might start working harder on self soothing. Because 30 mins can be a long time and when I start putting him down after that (lunch time only) then there was always a risk that he’ll wake up because he’s already had his little nap on me so he might be ready to go again. Think it was yesterday when I tried to put him down after 20 mins (a bit sooner than usual) and he puked in his bed again, he hasn’t done that for a long long time. So yeah, this issue needs to go first.
Saying that tho, it’s been 30 mins and I need to get some sleep!
Peace out ✌️
Xx
Life As A Mom 