Posts Tagged ‘sleep’
You Deserve a Good Night’s Rest
February 21st, 2011 | 
Author: By Melissa, Contributor, Confessions of a Doctor Mom (@Melissa_DrMom)
Sleep deprivation seems to go hand in hand with becoming a mother. It seems that the day you welcome your beautiful bundle of joy, you also say goodbye to a full night of sleep.
Our sleep deprivation though, seems to follow us moms well beyond the newborn stage. We are vigilant about our children getting the sleep they need, but end up putting our own sleep needs on the back burner. We want to do it all. Not to say that we can’t, but we would be so much better with a solid night of sleep behind us.
Most of us know this. I know this and yet I am probably one of the worst offenders of staying up late to relax, organize, write and blog. It is so tempting. The house is quiet. I can actually hear myself think.
Well if you are anything like me, sometimes you just need a friendly little reminder to nudge you into action. It’s time to start making sleep a priority and here’s why.
What Sleep Deprivation Does to our Bodies
The immediate effects of sleep deprivation are daytime drowsiness, decreased concentration, mood swings and low patience. These things we know, we feel them the morning after a less than optimal night of rest.
Well those are just a few untoward effects of sleep deprivation, and I think they are reason enough to hit the sack early, don’t you?
Need help falling asleep? Here are some sleep hygiene tips:
Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Finding your own magic number is key and should be based on how you feel the next morning. I think 7 hours is ideal for me but I rarely clock that in. I hope to change that.
Here’s hoping we all get our beauty sleep tonight. Sweet Dreams.
Do you get the sleep you need? If not, are you going to make a change?
Melissa is a part time pediatrician and full time mom of two. She candidly writes about her adventures in parenting on her blog, Confessions of a Dr.Mom
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The Joys of Co-Sleeping
By Mama M., Staff Writer, My Little Life (@5crookedhalos)
There was a time in my life when I took menial things for granted. For example: Sleeping in a bed All. By. Myself. Alone, with nary a wee little knee, bony little elbow or over-sized head jammed into my back.
Nights of uninterrupted sleep, when I didn’t have to rouse myself out of a deep slumber to scootch a little body back to the middle of the bed, so that I could sleep on more than a 1/4 inch of the mattress.
Co-sleeping. A hot topic, in today’s world.
Me? It’s more about survival for this mama; I recognize the risks and I hear the benefits, but that’s not why I choose to let my kids sleep in our bed. I’m not even sure you could call what we do “co-sleeping”; probably more “musical beds” is more like it.
When I started this “career” in motherhood I knew everything. My first born was raised to the standards that Dr. Spock, What to Expect and every other parenting book held for new mothers. When he awoke in the nighttime, I groggily marched him back to his bed, tucked him in and kissed him goodnight.
Over and over and over again.
Then, we had our first girl, and I discovered that when you have a baby AND a small child to care for, well, let’s just say that Dr. Spock and his evil side-kicks went right out the window. I kept my new babe with me, nursed her throughout the night as she woke.
As she grew and we added more babies to our family (read: more nursing babies in our bed, which meant the bigger ones got kicked out), she would take to the bed of one of her brothers,any one of them that would let her, just so she’d have a warm body to cuddle up next to.
Not once did I spend one ounce of energy worrying about her co-sleeping habits. I hypothesized that at some point in her life, there will come a time when we WISH she was in our bed so that we knew exactly where she was at all times. I theorized that by the time she was 15 she’d want nothing to do with sleeping in our bed. Right now, at nine, she will still, occasionally, wind up in our bed. I figure we’ve still got a good 6 years before she quits for good! 
Then, along came her baby brother who, even when he’s sick, prefers his own bed. He doesn’t like to sleep with people. At all. If he’s sick and we tuck him into bed with us, he’ll toss and turn and finally ask, “Can I go in my own bed, now?” as if we were forcing him to stay in our bed!
Our next little guy, is a hybrid of the two. Enjoys sleeping with his mama and daddy in spurts. Can take it or leave it, but prefers to take it when he can!
Our baby girl, she’s something else; like with everything in life, she’s thrown us for a loop and teaches us more everyday! She was an amazing sleeper as a baby. Once she was sleeping through the night, she would ask to go into her crib at bedtime. No cuddles, no co-sleeping just lay her down and she was happy.
Then, we transitioned her to a big girl bed, which she shares with her sister. To be honest, I thought it would be the ideal set up. A warm body for her big sister to cuddle up with and someone who would keep her in her new big girl bed. Perhaps a chance for us to reclaim our bed as OURS!
Turns out the plan backfired on us. We should have kept the baby in her crib until she was 15. We are now, once again, sharing a bed with whichever kiddo makes it in there first, and sometimes two.
Co-sleeping: it’s not all about theories and hypothesis. Sometimes, it’s just about survival.
On Not Sleeping Through the Night
By, Brook, Staff Writer, Baby and Sofia (@babyandsofia)
I have a 12-month-old baby boy, Paolo. He is a busy little man who never, ever stops moving. Paolo keeps me busy all day with his boundless energy and curiosity. So it is a true mystery to me why he rarely sleeps through the night.
Well, I suppose it’s not a total mystery. I still nurse him pretty much full-time. He has three solid meals and usually two solid snacks each day, but they are often followed up by a nursing session. What can I say, the baby likes his milk. And he likes it at night, waking to nurse several times each night. It’s become such a habit for me that I don’t even really know how many times I wake to feed him.
If I look back, I think the constant nursing really started when my maternity leave ended and I went back to work. Paolo was about three months old. We had introduced him to the bottle and he seemed okay with it until I had been working for a few weeks. He suddenly decided that he really wasn’t so big on it and started going on “hunger strikes” during the day. My husband, who had taken paternity leave (oh how I love the state of California), started driving him to my office out of desperation at the baby’s mealtimes so I could nurse him. Paolo would take just enough from the bottle to tide him over and then feed ravenously the entire evening when I returned home. This carried over into the night, as he caught up with his milk intake; I just went with it. My baby was hungry at night, and I just didn’t have the toughness to try and get him onto a better schedule. I mean, I was a working mother and my baby wanted to nurse. What could I have done? But it was the beginning of the end in terms of not sleeping through the night.
Over the next six weeks, we fell into a routine of nursing at night. My baby was happier, so I was happier. Then, suddenly, my husband’s career took us across the country. So I quit my job and we made the decision that I would stay home to care for Paolo. Great, I thought, now I can get Paolo off of his night nursing sessions.
Hah! It turns out that Paolo had started associating nursing with being soothed. (Surprise, surprise, right?) So, I tried to let him cry it out Ferber-style for a few nights. Hah! That didn’t work for anyone. Not me, not my husband, not Paolo. After three nights of this little sleep intervention, Paolo would start screaming hysterically if I tried to even bring him into the nursery during the day, where the crib and the scene of the cry-it-out sessions occurred. I decided to end that little sleep intervention.
So here we are, with a 12-month-old baby who still wakes up to nurse during the night. It seems that in order to kick the night time waking/nursing cycle, I will probably have to wean Paolo. Neither my baby nor I am ready to stop nursing.
I have deliberated over this. I have discussed it to no end with both my mother and my Italian mother-in-law. Americans are generally pretty tough when it comes to babies and sleep; crying it out is a common solution. Italians, on the other hand, aren’t quite so rigid when it comes to child-rearing. For example, in Italy, there are these nutrient-rich cookies made specifically to be dissolved in baby’s bottle with milk to sweeten the taste of cow’s milk, encouraging babies to drink. Which I thought was AWESOME, but couldn’t find anywhere in the States. Letting Paolo cry it out didn’t work so great for us; I’m going to go Italian-style on this and “spoil” my baby. I think that he will wean sometime over the next year when he’s good and ready. Maybe then we will both enjoy a full night’s rest of un-interrupted sleep.
What was your sleep training experience with your infant? At what age did your baby begin sleeping through the night? What have you found works best to help your little one sleep all night? Tell us about it in our embedded discussion below!
Life With A Newborn
By Julia
Expecting my first child. Excited, nervous, anxious, scared, overwhelmed. But I did what any first time mom would do. Read everything. From “What To Expect” to “Pregnancy Fit” magazine and every website in between. I joined forums and online groups, getting advice, listening to others’ stories and coming up with my own realization of what mommyhood would be like and how to prepare.
(If only I knew…)
I had several recommendations to read a certain book (that gets a bad reputation) that deals greatly with getting your newborn on a schedule and most of all, understanding how a newborn’s body and mind operate. And every person I talked to said it made a world of difference. I started reading it a few weeks before Hannah was born, but didn’t get far.
She was born. I was overwhelmed.
I remember sitting in the rocking chair at midnight one night, in tears, because I couldn’t get her to fall asleep. I, myself, was beyond exhausted and while I handed my wailing newborn over to my husband, I still found myself deeply wanting to hold her and comfort her. Afterall, I was now “Mom” and should somehow have all the baby directions memorized. I wanted to be that mom.
I immediately finished reading that book the next day.
I immediately began utilizing some of the concepts and ideas outlined in the book.
I immediately felt a sense of peace, control and sanity.
While I’m certainly not here to discuss the book, I will tell you some of the things I learned that I believe every parent should know and understand. And by doing so, just might save your sanity.
One of the biggest things that helped me understand my newborn was knowing their bodies ability to stay awake (or lack thereof). A newborn can usually only stay awake for 20-30 minutes. Knowing this helped me understand that when she was awake for an hour or (heaven forbid) two, I knew she was tired. I could snuggle, rock, lay her down and know that sleep was what she needed. As she got older, her wake time would slowly increase. By 3 months, it was 45-60 minutes and by 6 months it was 90-120 minutes.
To go along with understanding her wake time, I had to understand her sleep needs. We all know newborns sleep. A lot. But did you realize that they sleep in cycles of (typically) 45 minutes? When an infant wakes up after 45 minutes of napping, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are done sleeping. Many times the baby will cry, making the parent think that she’s had enough rest. And while you can attend to your baby when they cry, I found that trying to get them back to sleep was really important. Most infants need 2-3 hours of sleep at a time. And by rocking, snuggling or letting her fuss herself back to sleep you can “train” her to get back to sleep on her own when she does wake up at 45 minutes.
The other aspect to a new baby is the feedings. Oh, the feedings. Now, I’m gonna lay this out there… I was not a feed-on-demand parent. Everytime my newborn cried, whimpered, fussed or cooed, I did not nurse her. If I had just fed her at noon, put her down for a nap and she is up crying at 12:45, I did not feed her. An infant’s stomach is only the size of a marble. A marble. How in the world could I put more in there? And with many babies already having gastrointestinal issues (my daughter had lots of gas), I wasn’t about to upset it anymore with more milk. I typically kept an eye on the clock for a 3 hour feeding schedule. If after 2 hours, she was awake, fussing and her cues were pointing to hunger, then yes, I would absolutely feed her. I think many parents (especially people who criticize this book) think that we (I) are depriving our child of milk solely for the sake of schedule. And of course, that is absolutely not true.
When you put everything together and understand wake times, sleep times and feedings, it creates a natural “schedule”. One that saved my sanity, allowed me to keep track of my newborn’s activities and also helped me better plan my days. Most newborns typically fall in a 3-hour schedule. Nursing for 20 minutes, staying awake for another 20 minutes, then sleeping for approximately 2 hours. As they get older, the wake time extends, but the sleep time stays relatively the same. How does that happen? Well, around 4-6 months babies can typically go longer between feedings. So by that point, they are now nursing, staying awake for 60 minutes, then napping for 2.5 hours. That equals a 4 hour cycle.
As we all know, some days are bad and some days are good. In fact, I was just talking a friend the other night about her 8 week old and how her little girl naps well for 3 days in a row, then has 1 bad day of poor naps.
It’s ok. It’s ok if you have to feed your baby before the 3 hour cycle. It’s ok if your baby wakes up early. It’s ok if you have to wake her up to go to a doctor appointment. It’s OK.
But having a general schedule really helped me understand my babies needs. So when she wasn’t napping well, I didn’t freak out, nursing her every 30 minutes wondering if she was hungry. It allowed me to rest while she rested, get stuff done around the house and enjoy her time awake.
What were your coping strategies when your children were babies?
