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 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 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 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 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 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 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!

Day 65: Trying to find the sweet spot between not tired and too tired

Sometimes my insights seem blinding in their obviousness... after I have them. But it has come to me that perhaps Mari has been having trouble falling and staying asleep because she's not really tired when I try to get her down for a nap.

I once again experimented with letting Mari set her own schedule today, to see what's changed. And clearly, some things have. Mari can happily stay awake longer than ever, and I've finally decided she's given up on her third nap for good -- it's been a couple of weeks since she's taken one and she hasn't even seemed close lately.

I didn't set out to let Mari set her own schedule when I woke up this morning, but when I was trying to get her down for her first nap at about 9:15 it became clear she was nowhere near the point of sleep. So I decided I'd let her stay up for another hour or until she started showing signs of fatigue, whichever came first. Well, the hour mark came first and she wasn't sleeping until 10:30. However, she napped without waking for nearly an hour and a half.

The afternoon worked less well. I decided to do it purely on sleepy signs. But Mari has never been very consistent or clear about showing signs of fatigue until she's already overtired, and that's what happened. The screechiness of overtiredness came on suddenly, without so much as a warning yawn. She didn't go down for her afternoon nap until close to 4 PM and she was up again 35 minutes later. I suspect short naps are likely to happen when she's either overtired or undertired, and I think we've been having plenty of both lately.

So the conclusion I'm coming to is that Mari's schedule needs to change to reflect her only having two naps a day and greater comfort with being up three to four hours at a stretch. But she clearly does need to have a schedule, because she's not old enough to know what's best for her.

Another thing I've been thinking about is moving Mari's bedtime slightly later, in hopes of getting her to sleep a little later in the morning -- she's been waking up before 7:00 most of the time, and 7:00 is just barely tolerate for me. Last night she went to bed early (7 PM) because she hadn't napped well, then she was up and wanted to play at 5:30 AM this morning, though I eventually managed to get her back down for awhile before she woke up for good at 6:50.

Perhaps a new (ideal) schedule might look like this (not including feedings), with half an hour of flexibility on either side for naps:

7:00 - Up and play
9:30 - Naptime routine
10:00-11:30 - Nap
2:30 - Naptime routine
3:00-4:30 - Nap
7:00 - Bedtime routine including bath
8:00 - Asleep

If she really follows this, she should be getting about 14 hours total sleep a day, about ideal for a baby her age, and she would never be up more than three and a half hours at a stretch. Anyway, I'll give this a try for the next few days and re-evaluate.

Day 63: A near-perfect day and rethinking night weaning

Mari had a great day today. A morning and an afternoon nap of an hour and a half each, and hardly a moment of fussing all day, none at all at naptime or bedtime. Of course, I can't count on every day being like this, but I want to celebrate the good days. I did have to put her back down when she woke up from her morning nap, but at least she let me put her back down. And she slept all the way through her afternoon nap. Though she cried out a bit in the middle, when I went to check on her she was still asleep.

I am, however, reconsidering if I should try to limit her to one night feeding. I had been thinking I ought to because that's what our doctor said. I like our doctor; I think she's a very reasonable woman. However, Mari isn't a big eater during the day. I have been trying to feed her at least once every three hours lately but until recently she was often going four hours between breastfeeds -- I was more or less feeding on demand, but she didn't demand feedings often. Even with the effort now to feed her more often, I really don't think she's eating any more even when she does take the breast. She often stops before my breasts feel really drained, or really feeds properly off only one breast. And her weight gain has been slow lately.

Doctors seem to say a lot of different things about when a baby should night wean. Some say they're ready at three months; other say it's OK to night nurse well into toddlerhood. That tells me there's no definitive answer.

Mari hasn't demanded feeding more than twice at night in a long time. Sometimes she wants to nurse only once; rarely, not at all. But twice a night, considering she's sleeping an average of 11 to 11.5 hours in total, isn't too much to ask. I don't want her to get into a habit of nursing at night unnecessarily. But for now I will continue letting her nurse twice a night, though I will still limit it to 5 hours after she goes to bed, then 3 hours after the first night feeding. I will offer both breasts at both feedings.

Day 59: A shift in attitude

Mari is seven months old today. Already. I can't believe it. In honour of that milestone, here are a couple of pictures taken in the last week or so.

Lately Mari has been working on some new skills. Today she waved bye-bye to Jon for the first time. Before today, a few times I have thought she was trying to wave because she would open her hand and  flop her wrist, but I wasn't sure if she was just doing that randomly and it happened to be at the appropriate time. However, today she very distinctly waved, with her whole arm going up and down, as we were saying bye-bye. It was so exciting.

She also somehow managed to get off her changing pad, which was on the floor, in the brief minute or two I was out of the room. I'm not sure if she rolled over the ridge or crept backwards and then spun on her belly, but she was beside the changing pad and a foot or two over when I caught her. She still hasn't crept forwards, only backwards. She's a champion roller, but I've yet to see her roll over anything, so who knows?

She seems really close to being able to pull up from sitting. She can stand up if I just pull her arms up without my getting her bum off the floor. She was trying to pull up on the coffee table today too but couldn't manage it. She is also trying to sit up from lying down, but though she can do "crunches" from a flat position and can sit up from a reclined position, she can't yet do a full sit-up. I can't blame her -- sit up are hard for me too! (I am admittedly in awful shape, probably the worst of my life.)

She's getting good at standing. If I stand her up hanging onto something at chest to shoulder height, she can stand without me holding onto her for a little while, though I have to stay within arms' reach because she'll let go and topple without warning. Also, she can now stand up for a little while holding onto only one of my hands.

We've just come off a few poor nap days. Today was a little better than the two previous days, but she has still been having short morning naps, sometimes waking up in the middle of her afternoon nap and refusing a late-afternoon nap despite obvious fatigue. However, she's still sleeping well enough at night, so I've made the momentous decision to... (drumroll please) not worry too much about it. Yes, it's a big step for me. But I've been much happier since I've made that decision. If she wakes up from a too-short nap and still seems really tired, I do try to put her back to sleep. But if she doesn't fall back asleep again quickly, I let her stay up until the next naptime or until she's really obviously tired. Seems to be working.

Day 57: Still as unpredictable as ever

Yesterday Mari had a great day. She put herself to sleep for two lengthy naps with no more than five minutes of mild fussing, and to sleep at night after 10 minutes of mild fussing. But today everything seemed off. It took her half an hour to fall asleep for her morning nap, though she seemed tired enough, and slept for only half an hour. I let her stay up because she seemed wide awake.

Though she fell asleep more quickly for her afternoon nap, she woke up again after only half an hour, despite having put herself to sleep without me in the room, obviously still tired. So I had to rock her back to sleep. I don't want to encourage her to think she has to be rocked back to sleep, but I didn't know what else to do. She was obviously exhausted but after having already slept for half an hour, I doubted she'd be able to put herself back to sleep on her own. Maybe I had too little faith in her, but I didn't want to risk her upsetting herself, not being able to get back to sleep and getting overtired.

In the late afternoon, she again seemed tired, but she refused to fall asleep and because it was getting late, I let her get up after half an hour in her crib. I don't know what I did wrong today, if anything.

Day 56: Maybe I'm not going to need to Ferberize after all!

I've been reading Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Dr. Richard Ferber. However, I've been slack and am not done the book yet, and I wasn't planning to really implement anything in the book until I was done it.

However, the one thing I have changed in the last few days is that I have started putting Mari down drowsy but fully awake for naps, kissing her goodnight and leaving the room. Until recently, I was putting her down only once she started closing her eyes, though before she fell fully asleep. About half the time she opened her eyes again when I put her down, but if she managed to fall asleep again she did so with me still in the room. I had huge problems with her waking up after only a short nap, still cranky and needing to be put back down right away.

Since I started following Ferber's advice to leave the room, let her fuss for awhile and if need be, re-enter the room, soothe her and go out of the room again quickly, before she falls asleep, Mari has started to nap much better. I think it's because she isn't falling asleep with me in the room and then waking up wondering where I am. Because she's in the same environment if she lightly wakes up as when she fell asleep, she can put herself back to sleep.

I haven't formally Ferberized. I have not left Mari to cry for increasing increments of time. I've just let her fuss for what I thought was a reasonable period of time. I haven't let her full-out cry. And yet I already see a huge difference. Mari is usually staying asleep for naps of about an hour and a half (give or take) for the morning and afternoon naps, though the late-afternoon nap, if taken (less often these days) is only about half an hour. She's still sleeping pretty well through the night, though still waking up typically once to feed at about 3-4 a.m.

I'm so much happier and better-rested and so is Mari. I will post about this again if this is still working in a few days, or when I decide if I'm going to formally implement a Ferber-type program. But I hope I don't have to.

Day 53: Daylight Savings Whine

Daylight savings time started today, which meant Mari woke up an hour later than usual, which would be great for her to keep up. But she napped so late both in the morning and afternoon, by the time she was tired again, it was too late to let her have a third nap, so I ended up putting her to bed a little earlier than I would have normally, which means it would have been VERY early before the time change. So I may have screwed myself out of a chance to have a baby who sleeps until 8 AM. We'll see what happens.

Mari has actually been napping only twice more and more, though she had three naps yesterday, when she was more or less back on what I used to think of as her normal schedule. I'd really like to have her on a predictable schedule, but I think I'll be loose with it for a few more days to see what happens with the time change.

Day 50: Why does every damn book say something different?

I'm not very far into Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (Dr. Richard Ferber) yet, but already I've noticed how much different books differ in what they say even on basic facts about sleep.

Let's take the amount of sleep a six-month-old should get.

According to the No-Cry Sleep Solution: 2 naps a day, 3-4 naptime hours, 10-11 nighttime sleep hours, 14-15 hours total. (According to the No-Cry Nap Solution, by the same author just a few years later, six-month olds should get 2-3 naps, not necessarily just two.)

According to Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, from 4-11 months, a baby needs an average of 14.25 hours of total sleep, including about 3.5 hours of nap sleep and 11 hours of nighttime sleep. The vast majority of six-month-olds take only two naps.

According to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, a six-month-old only needs an average of 12.5 hours of total sleep, including 9.25 hours of night sleep and 3.25 hours of nap sleep broken into two or three chunks.

That's a pretty big difference in the recommendations, especially with the last one. Also, HSHHC says a baby about this age should be starting the morning nap around 9 AM and the early-afternoon nap around 1 PM. But SYCSP recommends the first nap start between 9:30 and and 10:30 AM, and the afternoon one between 2 and 3 PM.

What am I supposed to do with all these conflicting recommendations?

Today: Mari had tremendous difficulty going down for her naps, especially the morning one. I started extra early trying to get her down in the morning, since I thought maybe she's been overtired the last several mornings, which was why she fussed so much before going down for her nap. So I tried from 8 AM to 10 AM to get her down. She did nothing but fuss. Finally Jon was able to get her down at about 10:40 and she only slept for 35 minutes. In the afternoon, I tried to get her back on track by putting her down at 1 PM. She didn't go down until about 2:15, though this time she slept an hour and 50 minutes. She skipped her evening nap and was down for the night by about 7:15. So maybe there's something to Dr. Ferber's recommended naptimes, though I hesitate to draw conclusions from just one day.

Day 47: Nap hell

I don't know what's happened to my decent morning napper. Mornings used to be the one time I could reasonably count on a decent nap, especially if I napped with her. Now nothing is working. Mari is strongly resisting going to sleep and getting crankier and crankier. Hardly has she gone down when she's back up again. I am at a loss.

Today has been pretty much worst-case scenario so far. Mari was up at 6:50, and I started at a very reasonable 8 AM, I thought, to get her down for a nap. But she was not having it. She went from energetic to overtired very quickly and screamed and screamed for 40 minutes straight before I had to ask Jon to take over. She didn't fall asleep until some time after 10 AM and only slept an hour or so.

For the afternoon nap, again I thought I was giving her plenty of time to fall asleep, starting at about 12:30. But it was evident she was cranky as hell and yet wouldn't fall asleep until 1:25. Half an hour later she woke up screaming and it took me 15 minutes to get her back down. Then she woke up again within 10 minutes. I wish I knew what the problem was -- if you have any idea, let me know. And no, she's not teething yet. I keep checking, but nada.

Day 45: Thumbs down and thumbs up

I can't say today has really been a success for sleep overall, since Mari woke up at 5:40 AM and absolutely refused to go back down. Then she only napped very briefly from about 8:45 to 9:20 and the only reason I was able to get her down at all was because I allowed her to nurse to sleep. I then spent the next 40 minutes trying to get her back down (I persisted more than I like to because she seemed so tired; just wouldn't fall asleep). When I finally succeeded, she slept from 10:00 to 11:45, which totally messed up her schedule.

However, for her afternoon nap, for the first time ever, she managed to put herself to sleep for a nap. I rocked her until she was drowsy, put her down awake and left the room. I've been trying this only once every few days because the other times I've tried it she's screamed. Today she "talked" to herself briefly and then was silent. Hope she manages to do it again.

Day 42: Still struggling with naps

Why is it that one day can go so well and the next day everything is all screwy again when I've changed nothing?

Mari had bad naps again today, napping only tiny periods before waking up still tired. I'd rock her back to sleep and put her down and she'd wake up again, still cranky and easy to put to sleep again -- but also too easy to wake up by putting down. Argh!

Anyway, it occurs to me I didn't post Mari's 6-month pictures, for those of you who might be grandmas or otherwise interested primarily in the cute.