I know that lack of sleep is common with a newborn, but boy am I tired! Lucy has a habit of getting up at 4am. From 4 to 6 she is dozing, so obviously still tired, but only content if nursing, being held or in the bouncy seat. Can I just say that I've had it with this four o'clock business!
As I sit here in the wee hours of the morning, I am trying to remember what I did with Livy to help adjust her little clock. It's common for newborns to have their day and night mixed up and takes time to change it. Livy had a good sleep pattern at this point and was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. I would love for that to be the case with Lucy but as this point I don't want to see the clock say 4am for a LONG time.
So here is where I plead for help from anyone who can refresh my memory on how to change an infant's sleep pattern. I remember reading several books during my last trimester with Livy to do just that, but I am too tired to remember what they say.
Good luck! If I lived closer I'd come babysit for you so you could get some sleep.
ReplyDeletetreating baby differently at night to in the day was the one I remember. No talking, dim light, sort of more "purpose only" rather than loving mum. What I did find in the end was that my predawn wake up was directly related to the heating boiler starting up and the slight noise and the change in temperature disturbed baby enough to break the deep sleep and I guess she was rested enough not to get back into it. For me changing the heating clock gave me an extra 2 hours in bed!!! I think she may have been a little older than your wee dot though - maybe 3 months.
ReplyDeleteIts awful when you get so tired everything becomes a struggle.
Bless you - wish I could send some virtual energy and I sleepy baby pill xx
I am of no help, my kids were all terrible sleepers.
ReplyDeleteWell, Claire was a big fan of the 3:30 am time slot for a while, so what we did may not be a strategy so much as it was fooling ourselves. We just kept her up as much as possible during the day. She was downstairs with all the household action (if she was dozing, she was usually in her swing) with the blinds open and making no effort to be quiet. After a week or so of that, I would start putting her up in her crib during "select" times (which are now her two naptimes, about 10:00 am and 4:00 pm). We made a set bedtime routine (getting into jammies, nursing/feeding, reading a story, singing a song), and after the bedtime routine if she woke up it was all business. We also put a dimmer switch in her room so you could go through the "business" without bright lights in the middle of the night. That was about it. It was much, much harder to catch up on sleep for me with #2. Good luck. I will do whatever I can to help you (even if it's let Livy play for a bit so you can nap)!
ReplyDeleteLike Kelloggsville I did night time stuff differently. Low light, no talking, just change and back to bed. I had the problem of sunrise at 4 am waking her, but luckily she slept longer as the nights drew in -may be coincidence .
ReplyDeleteI wish I had some good advice but we had the opposite with Stella, a baby that slept well the first three months and then started regular night wakings, we haven't done any sleep training of any sort because the girls share a room and I have been co-sleeping with Stella on the worst nights. My only advice is to remember that it does get better, in fact I already miss those long middle of the night feeds, it was my quiet time with my little baby who is now nearly crawling and too busy to concentrate properly when nursing!
ReplyDeleteI'm not a mom yet so I don't have any tips of my own. I did save some tips from The Lazy Organizer's blog though for when we do start a family.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lazyorganizer.com/blog/?p=793
http://www.lazyorganizer.com/blog/?p=811
http://www.lazyorganizer.com/blog/?p=820
Hope they are helpful!
If I knew of a sure way - I'd be a millionaire. All of my kids are horrible sleepers and what I've learned is that it is amazing what you can accomplish on 3 hours of sleep! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteEach baby is different and what works for one might not work for the next...I know that switching a little one from sleeping longer in the day to sleeping through the night is not easy but it will happen...she is only a month old and sooner or later her schedule will change...hang in there!!!
ReplyDeleteMy first was a horrible sleeper. We found out later she was cold at night - she likes to be sweaty to sleep. (Yuck!) My number two and three slept in a travel bed next to my bed and if they woke during the night, I nursed them laying down and put them back in bed. We were all much happier after I figured that trick out. Good Luck!!
ReplyDelete