Monday, March 14, 2005
Graduating from Sleep Training
Finally after about 2 weeks of training we have managed to sort out Kayla's sleep routine. Her routine is Bath at 6 pm followed by a bottle, a book and bed by 7 pm. She sleeps until about 5-5:30 am and gets a bottle and then back to bed until 7:30 am. During the day, we try to give her two naps. Usually they fall between 9-10 am and 1-2 pm. Sometimes she takes a 3 rd nap about 4 pm.
It is hard to listen to her cry, but we realized early on that she cries more in response to our presence than anything else. Usually, checking in on her only made things worse. We put her down, say a quick goodnight, turn out the lights, close the door, leave the room quickly and Kayla usually is quiet in under 5 minutes. The last couple of evenings she was quiet before we even closed the door!
In the end, we adopted aspects of both sleep tomes, advice from our Pediatrician and common sense. Extinction worked for us. Checking in on Kayla did not. Although it is controversial, we decided to force naps because, following good naps, Kayla is happier later in the day. We decided that once Kayla went to sleep, we would not respond to her crying (unless it got out of hand) until 5 am. Now when Kayla wakes, she usually goes right back to sleep.
Kayla is fabulous. She wakes up with a smile, plays all day, eats all her food (except peas), naps well, has a new trick each day and goes to bed at night smoothly. She is such a wonderful girl and getting enough rest seems to bring out the best in her.
The only problems are:
1) She can go from back to stomach very easily but does not do stomach to back very well. As a result, she sometimes wakes up on her stomach and is trapped. Needless to say, this is very upsetting and sometimes requires us to play "rotisserie baby" and flip her.
2) We are going to Colorado, which is 2 hours earlier, and do not know what to do about her schedule. Do we keep Kayla's EST schedule? Do we switch her abruptly to local (MST) time? Do we gradually acclimate her only to get her synchronized just in time to leave?
As always, updates to follow.
It is hard to listen to her cry, but we realized early on that she cries more in response to our presence than anything else. Usually, checking in on her only made things worse. We put her down, say a quick goodnight, turn out the lights, close the door, leave the room quickly and Kayla usually is quiet in under 5 minutes. The last couple of evenings she was quiet before we even closed the door!
In the end, we adopted aspects of both sleep tomes, advice from our Pediatrician and common sense. Extinction worked for us. Checking in on Kayla did not. Although it is controversial, we decided to force naps because, following good naps, Kayla is happier later in the day. We decided that once Kayla went to sleep, we would not respond to her crying (unless it got out of hand) until 5 am. Now when Kayla wakes, she usually goes right back to sleep.
Kayla is fabulous. She wakes up with a smile, plays all day, eats all her food (except peas), naps well, has a new trick each day and goes to bed at night smoothly. She is such a wonderful girl and getting enough rest seems to bring out the best in her.
The only problems are:
1) She can go from back to stomach very easily but does not do stomach to back very well. As a result, she sometimes wakes up on her stomach and is trapped. Needless to say, this is very upsetting and sometimes requires us to play "rotisserie baby" and flip her.
2) We are going to Colorado, which is 2 hours earlier, and do not know what to do about her schedule. Do we keep Kayla's EST schedule? Do we switch her abruptly to local (MST) time? Do we gradually acclimate her only to get her synchronized just in time to leave?
As always, updates to follow.
