Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Sleep Update 7.5 Months

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So, we've made some very small strides with sleeping.  Kayla now pretty much takes 2 relatively regular naps, the first one between 9 and 9:30 usually and the second one usually between 1:30 and 2:30.  the naps are usually around an hour 15 and an hour and a half, sometimes shorter sometimes longer, but I'm just glad we sort of have some semblance of a schedule.

As for night time sleeping, I hate you.  We weaned the night feeding last week and now she will usually wake up around 4 am and one of us can usually get her back to sleep, sometimes it takes 45 minutes and sometimes less.  One night over the weekend this one wake up was at 2 am instead of 4 and she was up for quite a bit longer.  I'm attributing this to teething.  I am pretty positive she's getting the middle top 2 teeth and the 2 around the bottom middle ones.  The other nice thing is that once we get her to sleep, she usually stays asleep until morning time.  

We are trying to push her bedtime to 7:30 instead of 7 so that when I head back to work in a few weeks I may be able to get home and feed her most nights.  This slightly later bedtime is a little rough at night, however it's totally paying off in the morning.  She now usually sleeps a little bit later, until around 7 or 7:30, when before it was 6:30.  It's actually pretty amazing how much better it is to see a 7 instead of a 6 in the morning! :)

From all of this sleep, or lack there of, I've learned something...shocker I know.  I've learned patience, but also something more important, how to give up control.  I definitely think that parents can have a big impact on their baby's sleeping habits, but I also know now that there comes a point when you really can't do anything about how your baby sleeps.  Kayla just doesn't need a lot of sleep like most babies.  I have read 4 or 5 sleep books and we have tried literally everything word for word from those books, and she's still not sleeping through the night.  So there is NOT ONE person that will convince me that there is something I haven't tried that will work.  (If you think you are the sleep guru, please give it a try and my likely response will be "Yeah, tried that.")  Plus, now I'm starting to dread the day she will sleep through the night since I kinda like the 5-10 minutes of cuddling time in the middle of the night. 

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1 comment:

  1. 1- She's precious

    2- It sounds like you're making progress in the sleep department! And, you totally seem to be dealing with it wonderfully (this post is totally getting starred in my Google reader to look back on once baby arrives and sleep goes out the window, lol)!

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