Happy nine months, little nap refusenik!

Hard to believe, but Mari is nine months today. She celebrated by skipping a nap again and only finally napped in the moving stroller. I ended up with lots of blisters and a sunburn. Sigh.

I do NOT think she's getting to the point where she can do with only one nap a day, though. She's been so clearly messed up all day when she's done that. But I've been trying everything I know to try to get her to nap. I'm hoping this really is just a wonder week/fussy phase because that would mean there is an end eventually.

Another factor that might be interfering with her sleep and napping is the number of developmental milestones she's been through lately. Just two and a half weeks ago, she was only creeping backwards. Now she's not only creeping forwards quite efficiently, she's crawling, can get from belly to sitting and back again, and most recently, she has started pulling up. She's also doing great at "walking" hanging onto our hands. Maybe she's so busy working on all these new skills that she doesn't want to sleep -- at least, that's how it seems to me.

I know she needs to sleep more. She's a much happier baby when she manages 14 hours of sleep in a day, though that's rare. But I feel like I'm giving her every opportunity to sleep. She just won't sleep as much as is good for her, damn it.

A few days of sleep hell

It's been a rough few days, too rough to give me much time to post. Today seems to be shaping up better, thank God. But I don't know what the hell happened to give Mari such awful naps for the last few days.

On Sunday, Mari entirely skipped her morning nap for the first time ever. She screamed and screamed as soon as I put her down at more or less the usual time and wouldn't stop no matter what. A few times, I tried letting her get up, then putting her down again once she seemed calm, but as soon as she realized I was trying to get her to nap, she started screaming at the top of her lungs again. Eventually I tried taking her for a walk in her stroller, but while this has always eventually worked in the past, even though it tends to produce only short naps, this time Mari didn't nap at all. At one point she seemed to be nodding off, but then she jerked her eyes open and wouldn't close them again.

Eventually, she had a nap earlier than her usual afternoon nap, but she wouldn't go down again later in the afternoon. So she was exhausted and overtired by her usual bedtime, and though I tried to put her down earlier than usual, she again had a screaming fit and didn't fall asleep until 8:35 -- more than an hour after her usual time.

On Monday, Mari was set to refuse her morning nap again, doing the same screaming trick. I took her for a walk again, and this time it worked -- she fell asleep in her stroller, albeit an hour later than her usual naptime. I was expecting it to be a short nap, but accepted that as being better than none. But Mari had another trick up her sleeve. She ended up napping for more than an hour and 45 minutes, during which time I had to keep walking the entire time, since I know from experience that even a brief stop -- i.e. to wait for a red light -- wakes her up. So it ended up being a more than two-hour walk in total, despite my inadequate footwear, lack of food or water, and pressing bladder needs. I walked to Waterloo and back twice, and all around the neighbourhood multiple times. A death march commanded by a little despot. And that afternoon her nap lasted only half an hour.

Yesterday, Mari fell asleep for her naps without too much fuss, but both were very short (about half an hour and 45 minutes respectively) and so she was overtired in the evening. I tried to get her down at 7:00, half an hour earlier than usual, but she screamed until 8:05, despite many efforts at soothing.

Today hasn't been so bad. She had decent naps, though not fantastic ones, and went down at night with only a minimum of fuss. Trouble is, I don't know what I did differently today from the other days. Sigh.

One thing, though, is that I'm starting to think Mari is having tantrums about being put down even though she's obviously tired and even though she no longer WANTS to be rocked or slept with. So when she screams like that, I feel at a complete loss. There's really nothing I can do to calm her down anymore except let her get up and play more, which only postpones the inevitable and makes the overtired fits worse in the end. It would be one thing to do that if I wasn't sure she was tired enough to go to sleep, but the last few days I've been sure she really is tired.

I am starting to rethink how much it's OK to let her cry/fuss. I still don't like the idea of letting her cry alone. But when she was younger, she seemed genuinely upset or afraid of being left alone. Now I'm starting to think it's more tantrum-type screaming, which I don't want to indulge. I think it's time to think more seriously about actual discipline -- not punishment, but deciding what we want to teach her and using consistent methods to teach those things. At nine months (tomorrow), Mari is no longer a little baby simply communicating her needs -- I think she's learning to manipulate.

Incidentally, I'm no longer going to count the days since I started the NCSS, which I've deviated from anyway.

Day 114: Why won't she go to sleep?

Despite all the sleep problems Mari has had, going to sleep at night has seldom been one of them. Going to sleep for naps, yes. Waking up at night, yes. But she has seldom had trouble falling asleep at night, since she's tired then. Now, all of a sudden it's a huge problem. She still seems as tired as ever. She's still napping at more or less her usual times, though she woke up after only 40 minutes this morning and wouldn't go back down. We haven't changed the bedtime routine or her bedtime. So why is she spending so much time getting upset before she finally falls asleep? I'm mystified.

I do definitely think we're in a sleep regression. We're close to the 37-week "Wonder Week" so that may be part of it. I don't know if she's teething -- I can never tell. I'm afraid I haven't figured out a consistent strategy yet -- I'm alternating periods of letting her cry for 5-10 minutes with going in and soothing her, but she doesn't seem very soothed by anything I do. I'm at wit's end.

I know Mari's overtired and what she needs is more sleep. But I don't know how to get her more sleep. She won't go down for naps if she's not tired enough, and she keeps waking up before she should, both in the morning and from naps. How do I stop the cycle?

Day 110: Feeling like I've stepped back in time

Wasn't it just a few days ago I was saying it seems like Mari has finally learned to nap? Uh, perhaps not. She slept for only 45 minutes in the morning but seemed fine when she woke up, so I didn't try too hard to get her back down. But in the afternoon, she woke up after only 25 minutes of napping and this time she was whiny and still clearly tired. So I tried to rock her back to sleep, as I used to do when she was a little baby. I haven't often had success with that technique lately, but today she did manage to drift off again after about 10 minutes. After she seemed good and asleep, I tried to put her down, but she started to cry again as soon as I so much as twitched. Fine. So I rocked her back to sleep and this time I held her even longer before even trying to put her back to sleep. I waited until my arm was asleep and so tired I was afraid I'd drop her. I tried moving just a tiny little bit -- nowhere close to putting her down. She screamed. I ended up holding her for a total of 45 minutes (including the first time I rocked her to sleep), until she slumped over in my arms and woke herself up. I haven't had to hold her for a nap for months. At least it bought her a little extra sleep, so she was in a reasonable mood when she got up.

What's going on here? Is this the eight-month sleep regression?

Day 109: Sleep disaster

And I thought being woken up at 4:40 a.m. was bad enough. Mari was up yesterday at 9:48 p.m., as if the previous sleep interval from 7:16 p.m. had been only a nap. She screamed and screamed and refused to feed, only calming down when we let her get up and play for awhile. She didn't fall asleep until 12:35 a.m.

She slept only a total of just over 10 hours out of a 24-hour period yesterday, when really she needs about 12.5 hours to function, 13 to be moderately happy. The nights recently when she slept all the way through the night, she got more than 14 hours of sleep -- a whopping and unprecedented 15.5 hours last Wednesday. I don't know why she suddenly stopped sleeping as well. I feel like I've been doing everything the same way, giving her every opportunity to sleep. It doesn't seem like she's teething or in pain, because she was perfectly happy when we let her get up last night. She just wanted to be up, though plainly it was the last thing she needed. Maybe she got a little too much excitement yesterday, with both her grandma (on my side) and grandpa (on Jon's side) being here and providing her with plenty of attention. That's the only thing I can think of. Sigh...

Dy 108: 4:40 a.m. wake-up call

I don't know what's up with Mari. She had three great days of sleep in a row. Good long naps and sleeping all through the night without a single waking, not even to feed. Then on Friday, her morning nap was only 40 minutes long, and she woke up once at night. Fair enough. Then yesterday, she refused to go down for a morning nap until 11 a.m., when she's normally getting up, and then only managed a 40-minute nap in the afternoon. I tried to put her down early, but she wasn't having that. She screamed her head off before each nap and before bed. She woke up once at around 1 a.m. to feed, then was up again around 4:40 a.m.  I fed her and expected her to go back to sleep, but she started screeching again as soon as I was out of the room. I then went in again to rock her to sleep, and she did eventually fall asleep. I kept rocking her for about 10 minutes, then gently put her down, and she started screaming again. This time there was no getting her back down. Sigh. So it was an early morning for the whole household.

I don't know what happened to get her off track again. I don't feel like I did anything differently with her. And there she goes, crying again. Sigh...

Day 104: Finally learning to nap?

I'm not sure if I'm doing anything differently, but Mari seems to finally be learning to nap. Lately we have had fewer and fewer 30-45 minute naps, which used to be our curse. I used to always have to try to rush in and put her back to sleep, but that was hit and miss. More than half the time I wouldn't be able to get her back down and she'd be cranky from not having slept enough.

Today, very unusually, she had two naps of more than two hours each. This is well-nigh unheard-of. I don't expect this to become a pattern, but certainly she has been napping for more than an hour at a stretch more consistently. And except for today, when she went down at 7:50, her usual bedtime of about 7:30 and wake time of about 6:30 (well, between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m.) hasn't been affected by her napping better. She's just in a better mood more often. Yay!

What's more, Mari slept ALL the way through the night last night -- 11.5 hours. Double yay!

Day 99: Night wakings all over the place

Mari has gotten down to a number of night wakings I consider more or less acceptable -- one or two. Though of course none would be ideal, it may be asking too much at this stage, especially given that Mari tends to sleep a fairly long stretch in total at night -- from about 7:30 AM to 6:30 AM. However, looking back at the so-useful graphs on Babybix.com, I see no pattern at all as to when the night wakings occur.

Mari does normally nurse when she wakes up. She definitely seems to need to nurse at least once at night, though whether she needs a second night feed is more questionable. However, given that she goes to bed at a fairly consistent time, her totally unpredictable night waking times make me wonder what's going on. Can it really be that sometimes she's hungry at 10:30 PM and other times, not until 5:00 AM? Or is something else going on? If so, what?

Especially if she wakes up early in the night, we try to get her back to sleep without feeding, but yesterday, I went out for awhile and left Jon in charge, only to find that Mari woke up at 10:15, a pretty much unheard-of hour for night wakings, and Jon was unable to get her back down, leading him to conclude she was hungry. I (stupidly) left the cell phone in my pocket and didn't hear it until he had called 11 times and Mari had been up more than an hour. Oops.

When I got home, I tried to feed her right away. When Mari's really hungry, she can go at me like a vampire. This time, she popped on and off the breast in a nonchalant manner, finally nursed from one breast, then rejected the second after only about 30 seconds. However, she then went back to sleep easily. So while she was hungry enough to eat, she didn't seem very hungry.

Mari seldom nurses to sleep now and I know she knows how to put herself back to sleep without nursing because sometimes I hear her cry out in the night, only to quickly stop without any intervention on our parts. Therefore, I've started to wonder if she's developed a sleep association not so much with nursing, but with me.

I'm always the one who puts Mari to bed. This makes sense because I nurse her because bed. I'm almost always the one who goes to her in the night. Again, this makes sense because she usually nurses if she's up at night (though occasionally I will soothe her without nursing, which may or may not work depending on how long it has been since she last nursed.) However, I don't want to be the only one who can respond to her and have her go back to sleep. (When I nurse her at night, she doesn't actually fall asleep on the breast, but she gets very close.)

Jon, of course, has work to do during the day. I'm on maternity leave. Mari is my job. Should we nonetheless make a point of having Jon respond to her more often when she wakes up at night, so I don't have to be there for her to be able to fall back asleep?

Day 93: Teething? Growth spurt? Wonder week? Or just plain fussy?

Mari has become fussier than usual again for the last several days, and I can't quite tell why. When she cries, she's screaming louder. She's having more difficulty going down without a fuss. Though we really have been trying to keep her to her usual schedule, she seems more sensitive to the slightest variation.

Also, though it used to be that she almost never woke up before about 1 AM, for the last couple of nights in a row, she has been waking up after only a few hours of sleep and screaming at the top of her lungs. The only way I've been able to get her to calm down has been through nursing. She has drank greedily from the boob at those times, making me think maybe it's a growth spurt. She has been eating more during the day too.

But tonight, though I nursed her and put her down, and she was quiet for awhile, she soon started crying again. Jon is upstairs with her as I write this. So maybe something other than hunger is bugging her -- maybe her teeth. Mari has been sucking on things and drooling like crazy. However, she has been doing that since she was about three months old, and she just got her first two bottom teeth recently. A few days ago I thought I felt swelling in her upper gums, but now it seems to be gone. So how do I tell if it's teething or not?

Another thought is that Mari is coming up to Wonder Week 37 (though she's currently 35.5 weeks). (For more on Wonder Weeks, see the book by that name or the brief overview here.) She certainly is crankier, clingier and having more trouble sleeping, so that would fit.

But what this comes down to is that I feel like I have no clue as to what's going on with my kid. Sigh.

Day 91: Book reviews continued

Continued from this post...

3. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Marc Weissbluth, M.D.

There was a good deal I liked and found useful about this book. However, in my opinion the most fundamental thing about this book -- the recommended "extinction" crying method is overly harsh and unnecessary for most babies.

But let's start with what I did like, most of all the maxim that sleep begets sleep. Here, I have found that Weissbluth is right and Ferber is wrong. Almost always, an earlier bedtime, not a later one, is better for Mari's sleep. She sleeps more and better than when I've tried to keep her up longer or later. Of course, there is a limit, though Weissbluth sometimes seems to imply otherwise. Mari cannot and will not sleep for more than 14 hours in a day at the most, and she averages about 13 hours, though if I recall correctly, Weissbluth recommends 14-15.

Another thing I liked is the emphasis Weissbluth places on baby temperament and his acknowledgment, missing in many other books, that some babies just aren't going to be as good of sleepers as others, and that what works for most babies may not work for a certain percentage -- especially those who were very fussy as younger babies, which Mari certainly was. It was reassuring to me to know that just because some techniques work with other babies and don't seem to work with Mari, it's not necessarily because I'm doing something wrong -- it's because Mari is a different baby.

For the above reasons, I am prepared to believe that there are some babies for whom the extinction crying method Weissbluth advocates may be the only thing that works. However, I also believe that it's highly stressful for babies. It's plain that babies don't like to cry. Their faces turn red, their temperature goes up, they give every indication of being in extreme distress. Babies cry to communicate. Whether it's because they're in pain or because they just want their mothers, for the baby, something is wrong. I believe those needs should be responded to promptly (though not necessarily immediately), unless there's a damn good reason to delay response. In my opinion, a parent should consistently and patiently try every other method possible before resorting to the extinction method.

It's true that babies need to learn to fall asleep and stay asleep on their own. It may be true that for some babies, a certain amount of crying is necessary before they learn. However, just plain ignoring the baby's cries, no matter how long it takes, ignores the possibility the baby may be in pain or discomfort, which if fixed could get him or her to sleep.

I did find Weissbluth makes good points about why it's so important for children to be well-rested. However, I thought he overstated the case. I found myself worrying as I read it that I had already caused Mari irreparable damage by letting her stay up too long in the past. I even wondered if that was the cause of her not doing things such as crawling as fast as some babies (though she is still very much within the normal range). With a little more distance, I found the book was making me worrying too much. More guilt is something parents don't need.

Another issue I have with the book is that it is overly long, repetitive and written in a convoluted manner. However, that may be the editor in me talking.

4. The Baby Sleep Book, by William, Robert, James and Martha Sears

I like Dr. Sears a lot. I find what he says about attachment parenting (I have the book by that name and love it) makes a lot of sense. Though I no longer follow it to the letter (I allow some limited crying alone, I no longer "wear" Mari much at home, we no longer co-sleep), I believe in the philosophy of maintaining a strong bond between parent and baby. I believe the amount of time I spent in earlier months wearing or carrying Mari, co-sleeping, responding immediately to her cries, bonding with her immediately upon birth, and breastfeeding (still going strong there) laid the foundation for us knowing her well and her trusting us. I also found The Birth Book, also by Dr. Sears, to be the best, most balanced resource I read about birth. So certainly I have nothing against Dr. Sears.

However, I did not find The Baby Sleep Book to be terribly helpful. When I tried to follow his suggestion of waiting until Mari had been asleep for 20 minutes before putting her down, I found she was more lightly asleep than when she had been asleep only about 5 minutes. It also delayed my going to sleep myself -- but then, generally, I found the book didn't give enough weight to parents' needs.

Really, I found the whole concept of actively putting her to sleep each and every time problematic. I do believe Ferber's assertion that babies develop sleep associations. If Mari is rocked or nursed to sleep, then put down once deeply asleep, she does indeed tend to wake up when her sleep cycle becomes shallow, probably because she's alarmed that the conditions she associated with going to sleep (rocking, nursing) are no longer present. It was only when I started working to break those sleep associations that Mari started sleeping better.

Basically, the message I took away from The Baby Sleep Book was that if I didn't like Mari waking up constantly, I should just be very, very patient and she would eventually, by the time she was a toddler or preschooler, learn to sleep better and more independently. In the meaning, Jon or I should always carry her until she fell asleep and then sleep with her, even if it meant a more disrupted sleep for everybody. I found this unacceptable.

To be fair, there are bits about other ways of doing things, and a good chapter about night weaning, but I generally found the book to be simplistic, not that informed about sleep and not very respectful of the need to teach a baby to fall asleep and stay asleep on her own. Though just as gentle, I found the No-Cry Sleep Solution to be better about all that.

Next up: The No-Cry Nap Solution, The Baby Whisperer

Day 90: Eight months old and busier than ever

Mari turned eight months old yesterday. I can hardly believe it -- time goes so fast. Since I haven't posted photos in awhile, here are a few of the very latest ones.

Mari has been busy learning new skills too. She can now get up onto her hands and knees and her very latest trick is getting onto her hands and feet in the "downward dog" position. No crawling yet, but she seems very close. She's still doing her backwards creeping and is more efficient at it than ever.

She can now say "dada" and "daddy," though I'm still waiting for that elusive first "mama." She has two teeth now. She can now eat an awful lot of solid food. The photo above is from after she polished off half an avocado. While it may look like half an avocado is smeared all over her, I am convinced the vast majority of it went into her mouth. She's also getting good at eating even small, slippery bits of food. Oh, and she can drink from her sippy cup now, though there is still some spillage as she will only drink from it without the non-spill valve in.

As for sleep, she has been getting somewhat better about staying asleep longer for naps, which is HUGE for me, though she's still not consistent. At night, though, she's back to waking up twice most of the time, when for awhile we were down to one or none. I am thinking again about starting to limit her second night feed.

Today: An average day for sleep. A decent morning nap of nearly an hour and a half, but an afternoon nap of less than an hour, which is less than optimal. She woke up still cranky but wouldn't go back down. She was up super early this morning (6:10) and was so tired she had to be put to bed early (just after 7 PM), so I hope this doesn't lead to an even earlier waking and the beginning of a vicious circle.

Day 89: Bedtime disaster

I am writing this post a little late, but it's about April 19, which was the biggest bedtime disaster since I began this blog.

Honestly, I'm not sure what happened. Yes, I got Mari to bed a little later than usual, but by just 10 minutes. This has happened before with no real consequence. She napped fairly well during the day. I knew she was getting tired at night, but Jon had a lot on his mind and I spent a bit of extra time talking to him after dinner. I then performed the usual bedtime routine and everything seemed fine. I put her down at 7:40. She was starting to fuss a bit, but I expected she'd be able to fall asleep. Instead, a few minutes after I left the room, she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

She was so upset, none of the usual tricks (rocking, bouncing, singing, etc.) made one iota of difference. She wouldn't nurse anymore; she'd just eaten. She has seldom cried quite so hard or so loudly. In desperation I let her get up for a little while to try to "reset" her. She watched her mobile (still hung over the now-unused co-sleeper), which she likes, then I turned the light on in her room and read her one more story. Then I tried to put her down again. As soon as her butt hit the mattress, she started screaming again, if anything even louder than before.

I picked her up right away. I was prepared to abandon my usual rules about having her fall asleep on her own. I just wanted her to calm down. But no matter what I did, she wouldn't calm down again. She didn't even seem to notice I was there. She screamed until I thought she'd lose her voice, then she screamed some more. I alternated between trying to soothe her and leaving her for a few minutes at a time in the hope she'd cry herself to sleep, even though I don't really believe in that method. Neither worked. Finally, in large part for the sake of my own sanity, I just left her and closed the door to my own room. I thought I'd give her 15 minutes to cry, but at the 15-minute mark, her cries FINALLY started to peter out, though she kept them up weakly for a further 10 minutes or so. She didn't fall asleep until nearly 9 PM.

Now I feel bad for having left her to cry it out because it wasn't planned. As I've stated before, I don't believe Mari needs to "cry it out." I tried it intentionally once. It didn't work well then and the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with the idea. I don't want her to cry it out again. But I didn't know what else to do with a baby who wasn't responding to any of my soothing efforts at all. What would you do in this situation?

Day 85: Teething hell, again?

Argh. Mari just had her first middle-of-the-night lengthy screaming fit in a long time. I actually went out for awhile and left Jon in charge, so I wasn't home when she apparently woke up around 10:30 PM. She was still screaming, despite his considerable efforts to calm her, at 11:10 when I got home. I tried nursing her, but she didn't seem very hungry and didn't eat much, and she still screamed for some time after. In total, she was up for an hour or so, and our usual rules (i.e. about not spending too much time comforting her, not letting her nurse just for comfort) went out the window. I don't want to make a habit of this, but sometimes exceptions have to be made.

Jon said he had to turn on the light because she was really upset, and wonders if that got her "really" awake. Maybe being up and in the light at a time when she's not usually up made her act up like when she's really overtired. But I think she's (also?) teething again. Her lower teeth are now definitely all the way up over the gumline (though they still have some growing to do) but now there's a bump on her upper gums. She seemed fussy all day today, despite getting some decent naptime in. So maybe she's already due to get her upper teeth, though she just got her lower teeth?

I don't like the idea of unnecessarily drugging up our baby, but I've gotten out the infant Motrin, which I may use if she wakes up screaming again tonight.

Day 84: Book reviews and update

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. Mari's been having a more or less good run of sleeping lately, though she's still waking up about twice a night to feed. I've been thinking again about weaning her off the second night feed, since she doesn't really seem to need it -- she's fine when she sleeps well and gets up only for one feed. Also, if she has a second night feed she won't feed again when she wakes up in the morning, not until nearly time for her first nap. I would rather she feed when she gets up too. Also, she still quite often wakes up from a nap after only one sleep cycle, despite being obviously tired. I don't know what more I can do about that than what we're already doing. However, her naptimes have stabilized a little. I'm doing everything I can to ensure she sleeps at least 13 hours total a day, but she really does best when she gets 14 hours. More about that in the book reviews below.

I'm a big researcher, arguably an over-researcher, so I have read all kinds of books on baby sleep. All have had good points as well as not-so-good. Here's the lowdown on what I think of all the books I've read, in order from the ones I've liked most to least.

1.  The No-Cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley

The book that started me and Mari on this journey, and in my opinion, still the best. I like that it offers an organized way to create a sleep plan and to track progress. It also offers plenty of suggestions to create healthy sleep habits. You don't have to follow them all; just the ones that work for you. In fact, it offers a lot of flexibility, including no guilt about co-sleeping or crib sleeping. Most important, unlike most other baby sleep books, it doesn't involve making the baby cry it out, which despite my having dipped a toe or two into those waters, is in my opinion still an admirable and loving goal.

However,  as I have mentioned before, I have come to believe it's not always possible or necessarily desirable to achieve no crying at all. At least for Mari, I have not been able to prevent her from crying entirely, and until I stopped taking the book quite so seriously, I felt a lot of guilt about that. I believe there are different types of crying that should be treated different ways. There are indeed times when she seems to need to fuss a bit before falling asleep, and if I keep trying to comfort her, it actually takes longer or even prevents her falling asleep. Having said that, if I get the timing just right, she fusses little or not at all. She cries when she's overtired, so it's best to prevent her from getting overtired.


2. Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Richard Ferber. M.D.


I've never systematically Ferberized, but I found this book very informative. It has the best explanations about child sleep that I've ever read and the chapter about sleep associations, I found to be better than in the NCSS. I read the whole thing out of interest, even though Mari doesn't have problems with things like narcolepsy or sleep apnea, and now I feel I know what to look out for if she should ever develop more serious sleep problems.

I had formed a bad opinion of Ferberizing before I read this book. However, once I read the book, rather than just what other people had to say about it, I found the description of the method to be more logical and less harsh than the extinction method of crying it out. I think the method could work for parents who don't have the patience to implement the gentler but more time-consuming methods of the NCSS first, but after a couple of months on the NCSS, I found that Mari's sleep habits were already mostly good enough that it was unnecessary to let her cry for increasing intervals. Most of the time now she goes down pretty easily and if she doesn't, it's either because she's not tired enough yet to go to sleep or because she's overtired, in which case it seems too harsh to me to leave her to cry for very long. 

I have, however, taken some things from Ferber. When necessary, I use the idea of increasing intervals between responses and keeping my time in the room short. If Mari cries after being put down, I will first respond and comfort her after about two minutes of full-on crying (I let her fuss longer if she doesn't sound very upset). At all times I limit my time in the room to two minutes unless of course I'm nursing her. If she still keeps crying, I next respond after five minutes. After that, 10 minutes and so on until half an hour has passed since I first put her down. If she's still upset at that point, I let her get up and play for a little while before I try again, because I figure she either wasn't tired or is overtired but has gotten a second wind. I have only had to let her get up for naps; never for bedtime sleep. I have not, however, increased time between responses from day to day.

There is one major area in which I tend to disagree with Ferber. Ferber constantly contends that sleep problems can be solved by at least temporarily making bedtimes later so the child is more tired when he or she is put to bed. Maybe, just maybe, this is something that could work for older children, but it certainly doesn't work for Mari and probably not most babies. The more overtired Mari gets the LESS she sleeps and the HARDER it is to get her down to sleep. 

Also, Ferber says a six-month-old should be getting about 12.5 hours total sleep a day. I find this just barely in the adequate range. Mari averages about 13, and she's happier when she gets 14 hours of sleep or more in a day if I can manage to get her to sleep that long. In the three weeks since I have been using babybix.com to keep track of her sleep, Mari has slept a maximum of 14.5 hours and wow, she was in a great mood that day. Nor do I believe it's just that Mari needs more sleep than most. On the online message board for moms that I visit, it would seem the majority of 7-8 month-olds need 13 hours or more of sleep a day.

Wow, that took longer than I expected. I will post this now and continue the book reviews another day. Next up: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child; The Baby Whisperer; The Baby Sleep Book.

Day 78: The teething nightmare has started

Last night was Mari's roughest night in a long time. Actually, her whole day yesterday was rough, though she napped a pretty decent three hours in total (though she woke up earlier than usual). She just seemed fussy and clingy all day. She was acting like she was overtired as soon as she got up in the morning but when I tried to put her down for an extra-early nap she wasn't having it, so she ended up napping at her usual times.

At night, she woke up briefly to squawk I don't know how many times. I didn't go to her all those times because sometimes the squawking only lasted a minute or two, but she was up for nearly half an hour shortly after midnight, not a time when she usually wakes up, and every two hours or so after that, though she only night-nursed twice. She was up for the day at 5:45 this morning. I was NOT pleased.

Today she seemed extra interested in sucking on everything, so I looked in her mouth again, and lo and behold, big bumpy lower gums. Sigh. I guess it was too much to hope that she'd be a late teether.

Day 76: Where's that Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder when you need some?

OK, the above is a reference to Harry Potter's fictional magics. But I do wish there were a better way to get Mari's room darker during the day for naps. I definitely notice she tends to sleep better when it's a darker day. The blackout fabric I've sewed to the backs of the blinds isn't great. The other day, when it was bright, I tried throwing a heavy blanket over the blind and that seemed to help. But getting it on and off was hard, since I'm short. So I've just bought some more blackout curtains though I still don't have rods. Why are curtains so expensive?!?

Day 72: Scheduling feedings

I've never really scheduled feedings. When Mari was younger, I fed on demand. More recently, I've been noticing she hasn't been as demanding -- she can go for longer between feeds, even if she is in fact hungry enough to eat well before she starts to fuss to be fed. So more recently I've been trying to offer her the breast every three hours or so during the day. However, I haven't been very consistent about it. Of course, when she fusses to be fed, I feed her right away. But sometimes I've been feeding her more often or less often as convenient.

I've decided this needs to stop. Mari needs a better-wound internal clock, not just for naps, but also for sleep. Also, if I feed her more often during the day, hopefully she won't need to feed as much at night. For the moment, I still won't push the night weaning issue. However, I will as of tomorrow try to feed her at more consistent times, every 2.5 hours during the day, so ideally she gets six feedings in during the day. Also, I should be more consistent about nursing her before she gets solids, so she's getting the important calories in first.

One variation in the every 2.5 hours rule is that I will try to nurse her before her afternoon nap. At all times, I will not force her to nurse if she doesn't want to. If she's about to go down for a nap and doesn't want to nurse, I'll let her go to sleep without worrying. She's unlikely to wake up because she's hungry, as she has proven she can go four hours or more between feeds during the day. If she refuses to nurse when she's up, I'll try her again in half an hour and try to make up for the stretched-out feedings by offering her the breast every two hours, rather than 2.5, after her afternoon nap.

So her ideal schedule should now look like this:

7 AM - Up and nurse
7:30 - Breakfast (solids)
9:30 - Nurse, followed by naptime routine
10:00 - Nap
11:30 - Active play
12:00 PM - Nurse, followed by lunch (solids)
2:00 PM - Nurse, followed by naptime routine
2:30 - Nap
4:00 - Active play
4:30 - Nurse
6:00 - Dinner (solids)
6:30 - Bath and bedtime routine, including nursing close to end of bedtime routine
7:30(ish) - Sleep

I will continue to allow half an hour of flexibility on either side for naps, depending how how tired she seems to be.

Day 71: Top 5 things I have learned about Mari's sleep

Some time ago I posted the top 10 things I have learned in general about baby sleep.(http://sleeplittlebaby.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-44-top-10-things-i-have-learned-in.html) I continue to learn, but here are the top five things I have learned so far about Mari's sleep in particular. I'll post more if I think of more.

1. Mari didn't need to cry it out. I tried letting Mari cry it out, using the extinction method, once. (See http://sleeplittlebaby.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-48-crying-it-out-aka-hardest-hour.html.) At the time, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child had convinced me it was the best way to teach her how to fall asleep on her own. Mari cried for an hour straight, and though she did fall asleep soon after, I just couldn't bring myself to put her through that again. While Mari's sleep is still far from perfect, Dr. Richard Ferber's suggestions on breaking sleep associations (also covered in the No-Cry Sleep Solution but better explained, I thought, chez Ferber) were more helpful in getting Mari to fall asleep on her own. I think following the No-Cry Sleep Solution laid the groundwork for Mari's improved sleep, but I still needed a push to take the final step of getting Mari to fall asleep on her own, without being first rocked to near-sleep. Once I started to put Mari down genuinely awake, not almost asleep, she learned to fall asleep on her own and started sleeping better at night. It may well be that some babies truly do need to cry it out. But I believe for the vast majority of babies there are better, less harsh ways.

2. Having said the above, it was unrealistic to expect no crying at all, ever. Mari cries sometimes, in and out of our arms. Sometimes she cries a lot. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be much we can do, at least for a certain period of time. I think letting her cry for up to five minutes at a time between us going in and briefly comforting her is OK. However, I feel bad about letting her go much longer than that, unless her crying is winding down and it sounds like she's on the verge of falling asleep -- which does sometimes happen. However, Mari definitely cries more when she's overtired, and we need to work really hard to prevent her from getting that way, though sometimes it's hard to avoid, especially if her naps are short. For more: http://sleeplittlebaby.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-41-talking-fussing-calling-crying.html

3. Sometimes Mari cries for non-intuitive reasons. Namely, sometimes these days she cries to be put down, not picked up, or because she's not tired, rather than because she is tired. The first was particularly hard to believe at first, because when she was younger, she seemed to constantly fuss to be picked up and she never wanted to be put down. But now that she's gotten used to falling asleep on her own, she often starts to fuss when I'm trying to rock her or sing her lullabies toward the end of her naptime or bedtime routines. She calms down when I put her down. Also, I used to think she fussed before naps or bed because she was tired or overtired. Often this is still the case. But sometimes she fusses because she's just not tired enough to go down. It's harder to tell the difference with this one, but if she doesn't seem to be growing tired and wants to stand up in my lap, she's likely not tired. The only sure test is to stop trying to get her down -- removing her sleep sack, taking her to another room -- and letting her play. If she calms down quickly, she was protesting being put down or wound down when she wasn't ready.

4. Mari's sleepy signs are unreliable, inconsistent and not the usual tired-baby signs. Apparently some babies don't show regular tired signs, or not much. Mari must be one of them. She seldom yawns. She doesn't always show a lull in activity or disinterest in her toys. Instead, the first sign often seems to be apparently increased energy. It's like she's trying to mask her fatigue. She will rub her eyes sometimes, but only after she feeds, and it's a late tired sign. Fatigued fussiness can start without apparent warning. She does often look away from other people, including her dad, but she doesn't tend to look away from me unless her dad has been the one taking care of her and I'm the one who's new on the scene.

5. She needs adequate time to wind down . This may be her temperament, because she has difficulty with transitions. If I want her to sleep at, say, 2 PM, I need to start her naptime routine at least half an hour beforehand. But sometimes, if she's really tired, she will fall asleep quickly, though, so I have to watch to make sure I don't do so much during her naptime/bedtime routines that she gets a second wind.

Day 70: An ill (second) wind which blows no baby to good

It started off such a good day. Mari napped for nearly an hour and a half in the morning. But then I made a fatal mistake.

I've been trying to figure out just when her naps should be now that she has dropped her third nap. I think around 10 AM (starting naptime routine at 9:30) has been working out fairly well for her morning nap, but 3 PM is too late for her second nap -- I had wanted to make it later to avoid her being up too long at a stretch in the evening, but typically she's tired earlier than that.

So I had figured 2:30 would be an OK time for her second nap, and 2 PM would be fine for her to be home and ready to nap. But not only did my errands take a little longer than planned, so we didn't get home until 2:15 or so, Mari was yawning at 2 PM. By the time we got home and I tried to go through the naptime routine, it was too late -- she had gotten her second wind, and though Jon and I tried, probably too long and too hard, she wouldn't go down and fussed and fussed instead.

I guess I need to try to schedule her afternoon nap for 2 PM, starting her naptime routine around 1:30. And I really shouldn't cut outings so close. When she starts to yawn, she needs to go down right away. Mari didn't fall asleep until nearly 5:30, in her stroller, and was a mess all afternoon. Sigh.

Day 66: Great free online tool!

Thanks to Lauriella from the WTE board, I have found a great new way to track Mari's sleep patterns. Babybix.com lets parents enter all their children's daily data -- sleeping, eating, peeing, etc. -- into a single, easy-to-use interface. It creates handy little graphs charting sleep patterns, and provides automatic sleep and wake time totals and averages. I have only used the sleep part so far and I don't know if use the others since I'm not as anal about her eating and pooping, but wow, the sleep part is great. Bye-bye to the little notebook in which I've been scribbling all her sleeping and waking times for ages. Hello, easy-to-read graphs!

Today: I tried to implement the schedule I wrote out yesterday, but Mari had other ideas. She only slept 45 minutes in the morning and was tired by 2 PM, so I started her naptime routine then and she was out before 2:30. I had hoped for a longer afternoon nap to make up for the short morning one (she really does best when she naps for close to an hour and a half both morning and afternoon) but no dice. Given that, she probably should have gone to bed earlier but though she seemed jumpy she didn't fall asleep until 7:45. Since then she has screamed out a couple of times, and once Jon had to go in to calm her down because an opening and closing door downstairs (OK, me) woke her up. I'm afraid it's going to be a rough night. And despite my best intentions to improve my own sleep habits, I haven't gone to sleep yet either, though it's after midnight. Time to change that -- goodnight!