October 2014 // thread 6 // baby's new year resolution is to sleep more?!

[sazzlehopes]

Another sleep question- naps wise, we're basically stuck at45 minutes. I'm just wondering- do they at some point just naturally start napping for longer periods? I don't really see what I can do about it but presumably it won't be like this forever.

Tatty my first son was a power napper and rarely did longer unless I walked him or we were in the car... At a year and a bit something changed and he suddenly dropped his smaller cat naps and went for one long nap after lunch for a good 2 hours. It was amazing!
Ned is similar in that he rarely goes past an hour...

Tatty, I think that when you manage to 'crack' settling to sleep and staying asleep at night, you may also see a change in daytime naps at the same time.

I would say it is unusual to have short daytime naps right through until daytime naps are dropped. Mine have usually developed a longer and established lunchtime nap by 12 months and kept that nap until 3y or 4y old. Up until 12 months old, I've not tended to worry to much about the how and where of daytime naps - sometimes they are long and infrequent, sometimes they are short and frequent.

But, and this is a big but, because I am a SAHM I have no external pressures on daytime sleeping. This may be different if you have nurseries and childminders to consider.

Mine does 45mins to an hour then if I or DH can resettle he'll quite often then do another hour or more. He self settles at night sometimes I think - I hear him chatting then he drifts back off - but doesn't seem to be able to do it when napping. Annoying.

I try to have him asleep between 1-3.30 ish, sometimes this requires a lot of effort on my part but it gives some structure to my day which I like.

Thanks! I think that's more or less what I thought, but it's good to have it confirmed.

One of the things I find irritating is that sleep seems to be such fertile ground for advice and predictions of doom. What no one seems to say is: these are the things you might be able to do something about, and these are the things where you just have to grit your teeth and wait for the baby to sort it out. So I find that I end up thinking all sleep is 'a problem' when actually it's not really a problem at all, if that makes sense. I think probably most of what's going on here at the moment is stuff we just need to wait out but I'm so tired it's really hard to be rational, and google is not my friend in this respect.

I'm probably not going to go back to my out of the house job and we'll embrace poverty instead. But I do need to write another book at some point. Preferably this year. Har har.

My DS never really napped longer than an hour at a time and at 27 months he's 50:50 as to whether he'll nap at all. It means I've learned to get stuff done with him around. And when he deigns to nap these days I put my feet up and have a cuppa! Every phase and worry passes

What no one seems to say is: these are the things you might be able to do something about, and these are the things where you just have to grit your teeth and wait for the baby to sort it out.

A lot of the lessons needed in early parenting really can only be learnt through experience, rather than through advice. This is especially true for sleeping.

Plus it is natural for all parents to think their way of doing things is the right way, or their longer term goals for how they want to parent are the ideal and perfect way to parent their child. Of course everyone thinks this because if they thought doing something different for their baby was better then they would be doing that. That doesn't mean that everyone else's way is wrong, just different.

So that makes advise hard to give. You'll find lots of you could do this, have you tried that, but no do this and it will work because anyone who does that gets slated.

I was on a sleep thread a few weeks back and someone asked what a sleep consultant would say to the parent of a 5 day old baby. In my argument that you don't need to pay for advise, there is lots on MN for free, I gave a post that was effectively if I was sleep consultant to a 5 day old these would be the instructions I would give to the parent. I got absolutely slated from every angle for suggesting a set of instructions to a parent. I do get why, a parent needs to learn and reach their own conclusions about what works by doing rather than being told.

You can do things to 'solve' or help with most routine baby issues. But it either takes a lot of crying or a lot of time and each parents view on how long they will wait and how much heartache they will tolerate is different. So no one really offers an answer to these sorts of questions. What I would do to solve your baby's sleep issues will be different to what you would do. Just like how you would parent my daughter may be different to the way I do. That doesn't make one way right and another way wrong - just means that anyone's advise is only relevant to their way of parenting their own children.

You're right of course, fate, but I think I mean something slightly softer- which isn't do much to do with advice as the fact the way we arrange ourselves as a society now means you can get to the point of having your own baby with basically absolutely zero experience of babies. This is what I've done. I mean, basically the firstbaby I held was my own, which is insane- so really basic information like the sort of pattern a baby's first year takes isn't held in trust anymore. The internet is a good replacement, in a way, but when I ask whether baby's naps tend to get longer it's not advice that's needed so much as something way, way more basic. If that makes sense?

On the plus side... There have been moments this weekend where we've really felt like a proper little family, and it's been incredible. Like finally I've built the thing I always wanted.

Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound grumpy. If it did? I don't know if it did. I meant it to sing, y'know, interested. :)

I get what you mean Tatty (and it didn't sound grumpy to me).

We don't really parent as a society anymore ("it takes a village to raise a baby" and all that). I was the youngest and the first in my family and to have a baby so also had no experience. None of my friendship circle had babies then either. So my firstborn was the first baby I'd ever held. No mumsnet back than either. I did rely a lot on my Mum for advise and suggestions though, and she is great.

Tatty you'll feel that fab 'little family' feeling more and more as their personalities shine.

Fate good advice on the sleep. They all get there. When and how they get there depends on that nexus between how patient you are / how much crying you can bear. Sleep training and CC or CIO never existed when we had a village to raise a child as there was always another pair of hands to hold the baby and let Mum sleep until the baby figured out sleeping for extended periods for themselves.

I end up thinking all sleep is 'a problem' when actually it's not really a problem at all, if that makes sense. I think probably most of what's going on here at the moment is stuff we just need to wait out

I absolutely agree with that. Things we tried to make her do at 12 weeks, that involved nightmares with sleeplessness for me, and a very negative knock on effect for boyfriend etc and were generally unpleasant, she has now done herself at 16 weeks.

How is yours sleeping now? I've got back from holiday and suddenly we're back to 'normal' sleeping - still not amazing, but I've had a couple of nights where I didn't want to cry at 3am. Quite nice for a change!

there was always another pair of hands to hold the baby and let Mum sleep

I had this last week during the daytime.. suddenly at 10pm though everyone else lost interest in the baby and I was on my own until 8am. Haha. So, it was nice to spend some time along with boyfriend every day, but I was still massively sleep deprived. Ah well.

Loads of this resonates with me. I get so so stressed about the sleeping and of course it doesn't help anything.

I've had a run of shit nights this week then last night he slept 8-5.30. His best night ever! I'm trying to just enjoy the extra energy today and not expect him to do it ever again.

My boobs would explode if she didn't eat during the night - the one time she did the longer period of sleep I was awake for half of it pumping my boobs. I only care about her sleep for ME at the moment, so this was rubbish.

Fate what a fantastic post. I find it hard to give advice on forums without repeating "I've read..." or "in my (limited) experience..." or "my instinct tells me..." ad nauseam, but leave these things out and it starts to sound preachy or at least implies that I know more about the subject that I actually do (I may have an entire shelf of parenting books, but that only makes me an expert on parenting books, not on parenting itself!)

A friend gave me some sage advice when I had my first: everyone loves to give new parents advice because it's in everyone's biological interests that babies grow up healthy and maintain the species. You can pick and choose what advice you take on board (and laugh at the craziness that MILs spout), but you can't expect people to hold back with their opinions.

tatty the lack of the village is something that bothers me greatly, too. It goes back a long way, though - MIL's advice from having babies in the 1960s is no more instinctive than mine - different parenting fashions back then, but not any more based on the wisdom of previous generations than now.

tatty I think as well that being so isolated with a first baby, over-thinking everything is unavoidable. We maybe don't even need the knowledge of "do babies' naps tend to get longer" if they don't rule our lives.

goats I guess even in a hunter-gatherer tribe nighttime parenting falls to the bf mum!

splendide yay for good sleep. We had a dreadful night - dh called out twice, telephone woke baby, feeds every 3 hours.

goats things are getting better, slowly, but the evenings are hard still, with her essentially feeding to sleep then waking up after a minute or so and starting again. I'd actually prefer to have more night time wake ups if it meant I could have some evening time- we were getting it for a while, and it made a huge difference to me just to be able to have an hour or so to myself between her bedtime and me collapsing into an exhausted heap.

splendide hurray for sleep. One of the things I've been thinking lately is that baby sleep is basically a massive industry- everyone has a book to sell, so there's not going to be much "try and take care of yourself and it'll sort itself out". It's all "buy this because otherwise you'll never sleep again". It's calculated to make an exhausted person panic.

Temperamentally I think I'm more suited to waiting things out, really- if I know broadly that things will ease up somewhere along the line I can put a plan in place to get there. I also think I'm beginning to get a sense now of what my own likely weak points are going to be- I find it hard to know when to leave her alone. I'm not very patient, so if she wakes up in the night I tend to think well, I'll settle her back to sleep, it'll only take a few minutes. The last few nights I've left her to it, and it's taken her longer, but she's gone back to sleep in the end, and I expect she'll get better at it as time goes on. But I find it hard not to step in. I suspect this is going to be a patenting theme for me.

My boobs were pretty sore by 5.30 but I mix feed so my supply is dropping anyway. I'm just hoping to avoid having to give a bottle at night ever, not sure how realistic this is if he hits a growth spurt or something.

I find it hard to leave her when I'm worrying about her waking up other people. I know I shouldn't care so much, but I even feel bad if she wakes my boyfriend in the night. Duh. But that made the last week hard because I didn't want to wake the inlaws.

Last night I just put a hand on her for a few minutes when she woke at 4, 4.30 and 4.45, and she went to 5 before actually shouting. Probably she'd have shouted earlier had I not put the hand on her, which would have meant me waking up properly to deal with her (and woken up boyfriend). I don't know what the best thing is really.

She went to bed at 7 though, and slept right through to midnight without feeding - although again, boyfriend had to go in a soothe her a couple of times. We're trying to leave it longer before doing anything, but she SCREAMS if we do. Should probably use the video monitor to watch what she actually does before screaming... does she even try during the evenings to soothe herself, or does she think that because she can hear us, it's only fair that she gets up too.

It's really hard to know. But I think I err too far to intervening when it's not even that she wants me- she's just having a fifteen minute wriggle and a yawn and a stretch before she goes back to sleep. I mean, I quite often do that in the night. I quite often want a drink of water, too, so fair enough if sometimes she wriggles for a bit and then decides she's thirsty. It's just learning to tell the difference. Cf. also tummy time, which makes her cross, but then she psyches herself up and rolls over and is happy, if I don't succumb to thinking oh she wants to be on her back, I'll move her.

Intresting reading all your posts about sleep or lack off i think the first time around the sleep deprivation is such a shock to your system that its only natural to try and "find a solution" because you know everything would be so much better if you had a decent few hours every night. First time i tried everything possible to get her to sleep for more than hour at a time and each night i would think "this will be the night i get atleast 3 hours" but that didn't happen much ofcourse!! I remember feeling so deflated when i heard her crying and many nights i would burst into tears myself thinking " i cant do this for much longer" so the next day i would browse the web for another "solution" and expect it to "work" ? When it didn't... cue hysterical tears from me at 2am!! This went on for 3 years and only ended when i accepted "co/sleeping" was what she needed.

Second time around i obviously expected the worse and prepared myself by thinking that ANY sleep i get this time is a bonus even if was 40minutes, i expected that i would probably have another 3 years of sleepless nights but honestly this wee one has been no bother at all, i dont know if thats due to her nature or its down to me having a bit more experience and not bring scared to leave her crying in her cot for a bit longer to see if she will self settle and not picking her up through the night at every wee whimper, first time i was so panicked about every wee noise she made and would pick her up as soon as she cried etc so in all honesty i don't think i gave her a chance to "self settle" at all.

Wow sorry about the essay

She's been in bed now for 40 minutes, but is awake... she's playing with a snuggle thing, so I'm just going to leave her there and see if she can get herself past the 45 minute thing. At least she's not screaming.

Still playing. Unheard of!

Great post stigz, I understand exactly what you mean.

Goats - how did the nap go? Hopefully better today. Nice to hear the all the babies learning to self settle