Friday 19 January 2007

It's not really easier

Everybody said that the first three months are the hardest. In some ways it is but at times it seems like it's harder now than ever. They're 8 1/2 months old now, nearly 7 months corrected, but they're not sleeping through the night yet. Jin used to sleep at least 6 hours, but the last month or so he's back to 4 hourly feeds overnight! Cloud is a bit better, he goes 5 hours. I don't get it, how can they regress??? I've read that they are not suppose to NEED food over night, as long as they've had enough during the day, by this stage, they should be able to hold out until morning. I know that all babies are different, some sleep through at 4 months, others are still waking up at 3 years old! Is it a matter of training them or is it a matter of personality/physiology? Our paed said to leave it until they are 9 months old before trying to force them to sleep through, not sure why he said 9 months...should have asked him. So we've got a couple more months of a maximum of 5 hours straight sleep before we can do anything.

Jin is going to be harder to change as he has more bad habits than Cloud. Jin is addicted to his dummy, not just for sleeping, but during the day too. I think that's why he wakes up in the middle of the night crying...no...screaming for his dummy, it's like it's calm, then without warning, he's SCREAMING! Once he gets his dummy and a few pats, he's usually OK to go back to sleep, but it's a really rude way to wake someone up! He also has a tough time putting himself to sleep, he usually needs to be held to sleep, then when you put him down, he'll scream, as soon as you pick him up again, he's fine. We try to get him to fall asleep in the cot as much as we can, but he just screams the place down unless he's in our arms! Unless he's really tired, this is the norm for him...it's got to change, we can't have him needing to be held to fall asleep.

It's amazing how the human body adapts. Pre-babies I was getting 8 hours of sleep a night and if I only got 6 hours, I'd be really grumpy the next day. Now, I'd be in heaven if I got 6 hours! Sure I'm tired during the day now, but it's just the norm so I don't think about it too much, unless I'm really tired. It's all relative!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good morning, I found your blog while researching Ken Keyes and stumbled across your sleepless nite blog. I found that when my children were young, it really helped to have a ritual before bed. Warm milk, soothing music in background and reading to them in a soft voice led to sound sleep. After the ritual takes hold, even babies fall into the rhythm of relaxation. Best wishes!