Sleeping Baby
When my husband and I went to our GP to confirm our pregnancy, one of the first things the GP said to us was to try and develop a sleeping routine BEFORE baby was born.We did a LOT of research into baby sleep routines. Of course, it's hard to know what to expect when you haven't had a child before, so we gathered as much information as we could.
I think you learn so much from friends with their children of what to do and what not to do, and having some proven theories behind you is also a good idea.
We followed a great sleeping routine, and fortunately our 6 month old daughter sleeps wonderfully. She was sleeping through the night at about 6 weeks, and after developing a good routine she began going down well for her daytime naps. I know some people whose babies are older, and they're waking every 3 hours during the night for feeding! I enjoy my sleep and definitely could not handle that!
Now that she is 6 months, she sleeps 12 hours at night, and she has 3 naps during the day, 2 of those naps are 2 hours each and the third nap is about 40 minutes (one sleep cycle) but it's fantastic as I get a good night sleep and I also get to do my own things during the day while she is napping (in fact, I even get bored sometimes, which is why I get so much time to spend on the computer writing about things that I know about health and family).
We were fortunate enough in getting our daughter to self settle and not having to rely on rocking, pacifiers or any other comforters to get her off to sleep. She is on a 4 hour routine during the day (pretty much on the dot) and whenever she does wake up during a 2 hour nap or is thrown out of a 4 hour routine is when she's going through a growth spurt or teething, which is only for a couple of days and then she's back to herself again.
We have a lot to owe to having established good sleeping habits so early on.
Labels: baby, self settle, sleep, sleeping baby, sleepytime secrets
posted by michamum @ 6:00 AM
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