Sleep

I guess it's time I blog about Emma's sleep patterns and our success/failure at getting this organized. We're having some struggles in this area too. Like tonight, when I tried to transfer her to the bouncer after she fell asleep so I could eat supper with both hands, and she woke up, and then it took 2 hours to get her back to sleep fully.

Naps:
*Emma falls asleep best when being held by someone, especially if she is being rocked or walked around. She'll fight a nap about 50% of the time, but we generally can tell when she really needs to nap. We're averaging 4 naps a day, with one of those naps being her "big" nap of about 2 hours.

*She will ONLY do her big nap if she is face-down on someone's chest, whether that is Mommy or Daddy. She will sleep deeper on Mommy with skin-to-skin contact.

*One time she slept 2 1/2 hours at daycare, but she was in a reclining swing the entire time. She has napped in the swing here at home, but only for about 45 minutes (it's an upright swing).

*Once she has fallen asleep, she can be transferred to a bouncer or the bassinet (in the boppy, sitting somewhat upright and partly swaddled) but again will only sleep for about 45 minutes.

Nighttime:
*There is a SMALL window of easy falling asleep. She'll get drowsy between 6-6:30 and if we can get her to sleep then (or shortly thereafter), she'll stay asleep for the most part. If she wakes up or won't fall asleep, then we're fighting to get her to sleep until 8 or 9pm.

*She will ONLY fall asleep if she is on someone, again, face-down, chest-to-chest contact. Occasionally I can get her to fall asleep reclining in my arms if I have nursed her to sleep.

*She falls asleep easiest on the nights she gets a bath (2 nights/week right now), but we also don't bathe her until 7pm usually because Daddy wants to watch the evening national news. So it's a little bit of a battle to keep her awake on those nights to give her the bath, and then calm her down post-bath so she can relax and sleep (usually nursing works to do that).

*She can be transferred to the bouncer or bassinet, but only if her nighttime noise bear is going and it is mostly dark in the room. She will only stay there for as long as the bear is making noise (45 minutes) and if we can get the bear to re-start before she notices. We've never succeeded in keeping her in those places for more than 2 cycles of the bear before she gets squirmy.

*Once we transfer her to the bed with Mommy, she is really asleep for the night. She dream-nurses, which is nice since I immediately wake up when I hear her hunger cues and I can latch her on and let her nurse without waking up. Much of the time, I can tell when she's doing her "I'm wet, change me" dance and Daddy can change her without waking up. If she does wake up from a diaper change, it takes nighttime noise bear and a lot of patting her to get her back to sleep, which she usually will do within 1/2 hour or so. (Mommy is awake during both the nursing and the patting back to sleep, which means sometimes I'm up for an hour during these times).

*There have been a few nights where she's slept for 10 hours, through both the diaper changes and the dream feeds. She is one happy, chipper baby in those mornings!

*She will really NOT sleep past 10 hours. So if she falls asleep at 6:30, we're getting up between 4:30 and 5am. Occasionally we can get her sleeping through to 5:30am.

I need to get "The No Cry Sleep Solution" and read that, at many people's recommendations. But in the short term (when am I going to have time to read? Seriously? I haven't even made it through the first chapter of "Babyproofing Your Marriage" and I've had it for 10 days), I just don't know what to do. On one hand, I feel really good because we know exactly what to do to get her to sleep (rocking, being chest-down on one of us, patting, nighttime noise bear) and her night-time ritual is fairly predictable. On the other hand, I don't get anything done other than be on the laptop in the evenings. Whomever is not holding her is responsible for laundry, dishes, putting away supper, etc., etc. Eventually I want her to learn to fall asleep on her own, in something other than our arms.

First things first, we need to really figure out if she does have reflux or something similar that makes it so difficult for her to stay asleep when on her back. After that, we'll figure out how to help her sleep better. Only one more month to go until that "magic" 4-month mark where she's supposed to sleep a little longer without needing feeding.