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 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 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 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 37: Do babies have nightmares?

Wow, Mari just woke up SCREAMING. Usually she wakes up with a little cry that turns into fussing or calling but this time it was top-of-her-lungs shrieking. I waited only about a minute before I went in, just long enough to be sure it wasn't just a sleep cry. It took only a moderate time to settle her down and I didn't have to nurse her, but for awhile she seemed truly in a panic. It almost sounded like she was in pain, though I didn't notice anything that could possibly be hurting her. She isn't teething yet. The only thing I can think of is: was it a baby nightmare? If so, what nightmares do babies have?

Today: Naps were problematic again, though not as badly as some days. She woke up twice during her second nap and had to be rocked back to sleep because she still seemed tired. Also, she only had a 30-minute late-afternoon nap. I feel like I'm making no progress whatsoever on the nap front.

Day 21: Some progress, some frustrations

There are definite signs of progress. And yet, last night was a very hard night for me, one of the worst since we started the NCSS.

On the positive side, I only needed to put Mari back to sleep twice last night. She woke up and fussed a bit three other times, but those times, she managed to put herself back to sleep within a few minutes. I nursed her once when she woke up at about 11:30, and again at about 3 AM. So if we count only the night wakings in which I had to intervene, we have gone from 11 on Jan. 18 to two last night. I'm definitely happy about that.

However, the time she woke up at about 3 AM, she would NOT go back to sleep. Maybe I was wrong not to nurse her right away because I wanted her to go at least four hours between night feedings, and it had only been three and a half. I rocked her, but instead of falling back asleep, she kept fussing and seemed full of energy. Even when I gave in and nursed her, it didn't seem to settle her at all. It took until nearly 4:30 AM before she fell back asleep, being rocked in my arms, since by that point I had long since given up on trying to get her to put herself to sleep.

Also, she was up at 6 AM, which is an hour earlier than the earliest time I like her to wake up. Again, she seemed full of piss and vinegar and absolutely would not go back to sleep.

This started a day (today) in which Mari seemingly wanted nothing to do with sleep. She acted like she was hopped up on Red Bull and coffee. She kept waking up very early from her naps and refusing to go back to sleep even when I rocked her and even though I was willing to let her finish her nap in my arms. Her four naps today, which were stretched out artificially as much as I could, totalled only two hours, 15 minutes. Usually she gets three to four hours of total naptime, sometimes more than four.

Yesterday, she napped three hours, 50 minutes in total, which I count as good. In total, she slept 13 hours, 45 minutes yesterday -- still a little on the low side, but closer to the target of 14-15 hours.

Generally, it has seemed to me that more time spent napping resulted in a better night's sleep. But I wonder now if it's possible that napping a little more than usual yesterday resulted in the wakefulness last night and today. I've been logging nap lengths since Feb. 2, so once I have 10 days worth of data, I'll try to look for patterns.

Returning to the results from a day of logging, Mari's sleep stretches have improved a little -- she went for three hours, 8 minutes between wakeful episodes last night. That's counting the night wakings in which I didn't have to intervene. If you count only the times when I did have to go in, she went three hours, 45 minutes between when she first fell asleep and her first night nursing.

However, there has been little progress on getting her to fall asleep without rocking, especially for naps. We're at the same spot as 10 days ago, with me usually having to rock her until she's very nearly asleep. I did try repeatedly to put her down before she started to close her eyes, but she was having none of it. I'll have to keep trying. I know she can do it because she occasionally does it in our bed when we're co-sleeping or co-napping, but she hasn't managed it in her crib yet. This is something we'll work on in the next 10-day plan.

Day 18: Setbacks

Mari had a great night of sleep Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, her best since we started the No-Cry Sleep Solution. She did indeed end up sleeping on her belly, at first because she rolled onto it and after that because I actually put her down on her belly, as an experiment. I woke her up around midnight to give her a dream feed just before I went to bed, and she woke up around 4 a.m. to feed as well. That was it. She spent the whole night in her crib, for the first time. I thought I was dreaming when I woke up alone in bed.

Then, the next day, her routine got totally disrupted by our trip out of town to see Jon's dad. She had four naps on Wednesday, but despite my best efforts, they were all really short. Further, because we arrived quite late, she didn't get to bed until 9:15. She was clearly overtired and fussy when she went to bed and although I tried again to get her to sleep on her belly, she still woke up constantly. The next day, after Jon did some work for his father's small business, we returned home. She napped a little better that day, but again, we got home late, and again, she didn't get to bed until after 9 PM, and again, she had a rough night.

Today, we're back home and I was quite strict about getting Mari down for her naps on schedule, but she still didn't sleep well. All three of her naps were short and would have been shorter if I hadn't ended up holding her for most of them because she wouldn't stay asleep otherwise. At night, even though we were slightly ahead of her official schedule, she was overtired because she hadn't napped well, and I really couldn't get her to bed any sooner than I did because I was starving and had to have a proper dinner. I had the lights out by 7:30, but it took her until 8:15 to fall asleep, and she's woken up plenty since then. I feel like much of the work I've done over the past 18 days has come to naught. Damn.

Day 15: Belly flop

Now that Mari is fairly good at rolling over, she almost always rolls onto her side when I put her down on her back, and a few times she's rolled onto her belly. I know the sages say not to let babies sleep on their bellies, but I've let her stay there, since I figure if she's big enough to put herself on her belly she's big enough to survive it. I do make sure there are no obvious suffocation hazards around. No bumper, no soft toys except her lovey, which is quite thin, no pillow, no blankets.

I'm more torn on whether to actively encourage belly sleeping. Mari has been inconsistent in her reactions to belly sleeping. The first time I tried it, Mari had by far her longest sleep stretch EVER -- 7 hours, 15 minutes. I had to go in to check if she was dead. Since then, though, results vary dramatically. Sometimes she has a good solid sleep. Other times she's up within minutes, and seems more upset than usual. I think this is another thing I'll have to keep track of to see if it really does produce an improvement in her sleep, at least most of the time.

Day 14: Why won't she stay asleep???

OK, it's been one of those nights. And for no reason that's obvious to me. Mari had an average amount of total naptime, though it's true that the first was long and the next two short. She had an average amount of stimulation for the day. It took her longer than usual to fall asleep, but the first couple of hours of sleep were fine. Since then, she's been waking up what seems like every 10 minutes.

Maybe what I need is more data. I know the NCSS cautions against logging too often, because patience is necessary. But part of me wonders if there's an optimal amount of naptime, a perfect bedtime, that I'm not consistently hitting on. So starting tomorrow I'll try to keep better track of the amount of naptime, the bedtime and the number of night wakings. Maybe there's another variable, but I'll start with those.

Results after 10 days on the No-Cry Sleep Solution

Well, Mari isn't sleeping through the night yet, and her night-waking rate would make many parents of easier babies weep. But there has definitely been some improvement in the last 10 days.

On Jan. 18, Mari woke up 11 times overnight. Last night, she woke up only five times. I know some parents think it's awful if their baby wakes up once, but for Mari, her night waking rate has been cut by more than half.

When we started, Mari spent just 2.5 hours napping. Yesterday, she napped for 3.5 hours in total, and I think that has helped her be less overtired and thus sleep better.

Another exciting thing is that Mari has started to be able to put herself back to sleep. In the last couple of days, she has cried out a few times, long enough and loudly enough (though not full-on upset crying) that I was sure she was actually up, not merely talking in her sleep. I waited. And then, the fussing stopped. It didn't work every time, but that she did it at all is a huge step. Also, I have been putting her down still awake, if just barely, and she has often, though not always, managed to put herself to sleep without further picking up. That's a big step too.

She has been napping in her crib typically two naps out of three, which is a great improvement over 10 days ago, when she always napped in our bed, and had to fall asleep curled up against Mom or Dad. In fact, she could probably nap in her crib all the time, if I didn't usually want a morning nap too, since Mari is still keeping or waking me up a lot.

At night too, she's spending more time in her crib. Ten days ago I only kept her in her crib until I went to bed. Then I moved to keeping her there until the first time she woke up after I went to bed. In the last couple of days, I have moved to keeping her there until the second time she wakes up after I go to bed. If she starts sleeping longer I will try to keep here there even longer until she's sleeping in her crib all night.

Mari has never been one of those babies who fell asleep nursing all the time, but she did it fairly often 10 days ago. Now she almost never does. If she does I slightly wake her up before putting her down and most of the time she falls asleep again pretty easily.

Adding naps and night sleep together, she slept 13 hours, 20 minutes last night, up from 11 hours, 25 minutes on Jan. 18. She should still be getting more -- 14 to 15 hours for a six-month-old, according to the book (Mari is only five months and one week, but there isn't a time recommendation for a five-month-old).

It isn't all good news. The worst part, as far as I'm concerned, is that her sleep stretches haven't shown much improvement. Ten days ago, her longest sleep stretch was two hours, 45 minutes. Last night, it was -- get this -- two hours, 50 minutes. Yay, five minutes' more sleep.

Mari's bedtime has actually migrated later, to 8 PM the last few nights, despite my best intentions to start her bedtime routine at 6:30 and have her asleep by 7:30. That just isn't fitting well into my life. I can manage starting her bath at 7, though. I guess there has to be a balance between meeting her needs and mine. It wouldn't be all that bad if she didn't wake up as often as she does, but when I subtract the amount of time she spends awake in the middle of the night, she only slept 9 hours, 50 minutes last night. She should be getting 10-11 hours at night.

I haven't been good enough at getting her to bed quickly for naps when she shows signs of being tired, and her naptimes are as inconsistent as ever -- more about that one of these days.

But the good news certainly outweighs the bad. Time to revise the sleep plan and stick to it. Thank you, No-Cry Sleep Solution.

Day 10: Starting to see some success?

Suddenly things seem to be coming together. This is the second night in a row that Mari has managed to put herself to sleep again after waking up and crying out. Of course, she's still waking up more often than I'd like, but she's waking up less often than she did even a few days ago.

Since this is Day 10, I've been logging her naps, bedtime routine and night wakings. Results and a new plan tomorrow.

Day 6: Off the rails

Mari seems determined not to be scheduled or predicted. Yesterday ended up being a very rough night of sleep. She woke up more times than I can count and was wide awake at 1 AM for a good hour. And yet, the day had gone relatively well and the schedule more or less adhered to.

Today, the schedule pretty much went out the window. Mari was up at 6:30 and took a two-and-a-quarter hour nap from 9:30 to 11:45 -- her longest nap since she was about three months. By 1:30, she already seemed tired, so I did most of her naptime routine and left Jon to really put her down while I went out for my weekly afternoon off.

I returned three and a half hours later (half an hour later than I'd promised Jon; oops) to learn Mari had slept only 20 minutes, refused to go back down, refused to take a bottle of pumped milk (she used to take it but has been refusing pretty consistently for the last couple of weeks, which is another source of stress) and then cried until I got home.

So I fed her at 5:30, put her down for the ill-advised evening nap from 6:00 to 6:30 (she woke up), and didn't get her in bed properly until about 8:00.

The surprise? It's actually been a relatively good evening for sleep so far, with only one waking since.

I guess she got a reasonable amount of total naptime, with the long morning nap. And I still think the schedule will do her good in the long run. But it goes to show what an unpredictable baby she is.

Day 5: Ch-ch-ch changes

It's clear some aspects of my sleep plan aren't working out.

For one, I can't breastfeed every two hours. I used to be able to, when Mari was younger, but now she's eating more at once and isn't hungry as often, and when she's not hungry, she rejects the boob. All that's good in general, but not when I'm trying to get her to eat more during the day so she doesn't need as much at night. It's still not clear to me just how much Mari really needs to eat at night. She does seem legitimately hungry sometimes, but other times, even now that I've been stretching out how often I'll put her to the boob, she barely nips.

Also, I don't think Mari can really take three 90-minute naps. It's a battle getting her to stay napping for more than 20 minutes sometimes. I can persevere to a point, but sometimes she's obviously up and energetic and no amount of rocking will put her back to sleep. So I will now be trying to get her to nap for 90 minutes in the morning and late afternoon, but will allow her early afternoon one to be shorter -- that one's been the shortest for a long time. I'll still try to get her to nap at least 3.5 hours in total, 4 if I can manage it.

Finally, I think we need to be stricter about her naptimes, to try to get her onto a more consistent schedule, much as she resists being scheduled. It takes her quite awhile to settle down into sleep, so I need to start a naptime routine half an hour before I want her actually sleeping. That's only an hour and a half of active awake time between naps. So her ideal day should now look like:

7:30ish - up and play
9:00 - Naptime routine: breastfeed boob 1, story, song, breastfeed boob 2 (she likes a break between boobs), rock and shh
9:30 - Nap
11:00 - Play
12:30 - Naptime routine
1:00 - Nap
2:00 - Play
3:30 - Naptime routine
4:00 - Nap
5:30 - Play
6:30 - Bedtime routine: Bath, massage, breastfeed boob 1, two stories, lights out and sound machine on, lullaby, breastfeed boob 2, rock and shh
7:30 - Sleep

Today: It was a rough start to the evening. Mari went down okay by 7:45, but by 8 PM, she was up again. I tried repeatedly to soothe her just enough to get her drowsy and put her down still awake. Several times, she seemed to go to sleep, only to start fussing again minutes later. Finally she started all-out crying. She seemingly didn't want to be rocked, jiggled, nursed or put down -- nothing worked for the longest time. Finally I gave up (for now) on trying to put her in her crib still barely awake, and finally she allowed me to rock her to sleep. It took an hour, and she was up again within less than another hour. Argh!

Day 4: Lovey bunny

I've been working on introducing a lovey, as the No-Cry Sleep Solution instructs. I chose the bunny at right because Mari sucks on everything she touches, and I thought organic cotton would be better than some synthetic teddy. It's similar to the Snoedel NCSS author Elizabeth Pantley said she used with her youngest. Also, with a light T-shirt-like feel, I figured it would be easy to stuff it in my shirt for a few hours and give it my scent. (I wore it most of the day the day before we started the sleep plan and went around with the little bunny head sticking out from between my boobs. These are the things a mother does.)

I wasn't sure if Mari would take to it, since she hadn't adopted anything on her own as a comfort object, but she now seems to be enjoying sucking on Bunny before she falls asleep at naptimes and at night. All well and good, I thought.

Then Jon found her yesterday with Bunny stuffed right up against her face. It made us wonder if she might be able to suffocate on that thing. Of course, many babies cuddle with their blankies, some of which are no doubt thicker than Bunny. Mari evidently survived her mashing-Bunny-into-face experience. But it made us wonder what a totally safe lovey would be. I don't think I'll be trying to get her to glom onto another comfort object, at least not for now, though. I'm sure if people of my generation survived sleeping on our bellies with lots of squishy blankets, not to mention being fed with formula and non-organic baby food, Mari will survive her bunny.

On a related note, Pantley says to have an extra identical lovey in case the first goes missing or gets destroyed and baby is inconsolable. A good idea, but Bunny was a gift and I don't know where to get another. Anybody know? It's made by Piccolo Bambino.

Today: A better day for napping, though three 90-minute naps may be too ambitious for Mari, who woke up from her second one after only half an hour and absolutely wouldn't go back down. So far a not-bad evening for sleeping, with a nearly three-hour stretch in between episodes of frequent waking. Maybe there's hope.

Day 3: How long can a five-month-old stay up?

The day started out so well. Mari had a fairly long morning nap, followed by a long early-afternoon nap. Both were admittedly broken up by awakenings, but I managed to get her back to sleep. She seemed well-rested, though both naps started and ended later than I would have liked.

Then, less than an hour after her afternoon nap, she started rubbing her eyes and fussing again. I thought it was too soon for her to be seriously tired already. After all, she's not a newborn. She's stayed awake far longer than an hour. So I read her a story, put her in her sling and did a few things. Then I nursed her, and she fussed when she was done. I wasn't sure if she was fussing out of fatigue or because she wanted to use the potty, but I took her to the potty. Then I tried to rock her to sleep but she wasn't having it. Before I knew it an hour had passed and she no longer seemed tired. It was also six o'clock. So I had went to have supper, and midway through, she started to fuss again, the fussing of an overtired baby. I had missed the window of opportunity to get her to take a third nap.

I'm still finding it kind of hard to believe that at this age, a well-rested baby would want another nap after less than an hour of being up. But the evidence is there. And once again she hasn't slept enough during the day and being overtired before bed is making her wake up frequently in the evening. Damn. Following this plan is harder than I thought.

Mari's sleep results

I spent yesterday logging when Mari napped, our pre-bedtime routine and her night wakings. The result: 11 night wakings. Yes, eleven. Now you know why I'm so tired.

It may have even been a slightly better than usual day. Though I haven't yet started the formal new sleep plan, I was already following some of the suggestions from the No-Cry Sleep Solution, and put her to bed earlier than usual. In total, she slept 8 hours 50 minutes at night. The book says she should be getting 10 or 11.

Her longest sleep stretch was 2 hours and 45 minutes, probably the longest she's had in weeks – I don't think she's slept more than two hours at a stretch since the new year. Her shortest, after appearing to be genuinely asleep enough for me to relax and log the previous sleep stretch, was five minutes.

Her longest awake stretch was 30 minutes, which is better than usual. Some days she's up for an hour or an hour and a half before dawn, before she goes to sleep again. But 11 wakings of 5-30 minutes each means I'm really not getting much sleep, especially considering it takes me longer to get to sleep than she does.

It wasn't a good day for naps either. In fact, the short naps were why I put her to bed earlier than usual. Her three naps totalled only 2 hours and 35 minutes, a far cry from the 5-6 hours the book says she should be getting at this age.

In total, Mari slept 11 hours, 25 minutes. She should be getting 14 or 15 hours of sleep. It's clear something has to change.

Tomorrow: the plan.

Introducing Mari's sleep blog

Welcome to my new blog about trying to get my baby to sleep through the night. This blog is based on The No-Cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley. I'm keeping this blog in large part to keep myself honest – that is, following the book and my sleep plan. I'm far too good at doing things in a half-arsed way, but can't afford to this time. I'm also doing this in hopes of getting feedback and suggestions from parents who have had more success at baby sleep than me, and hopefully to help out parents who are just as sleep-deprived. The first few posts may be long as I try to set up my daughter's sleep plan, but they should be shorter after that as I explore one of Pantley's sleep ideas at a time.

Introducing the cast of characters

Mari (pronounced MAH-ree): In my biased opinion, the most adorable little girl in the entire world. She'll be five months in two days. Until last month, I was able to more or less live with her night wakings. Typically, she woke up three or four times a night, nursed and usually went straight back to sleep. Sure, sometimes she woke up more often and sometimes she stayed up for an hour or more to fuss in the middle of the night, but those bad nights only occurred once or twice a week.

Until she was about three months old, she didn't seem to have much of a clue when night and day were, so we often kept her up quite late at night, but she napped quite a lot during the day and evening. By early December, we got her bedtime down to 8 PM or so and by mid-December, weaned her from having to be swaddled. I had to stay with her for awhile after she first fell asleep, and when her sleep got lighter after about 45 minutes, I would put a hand on her belly and shush her. Normally she didn't wake up. On good nights, she would stay down for up to four hours and would let me do grown-up things before bed. After that, she typically woke up once every three hours to feed and went straight back to sleep.

Then, around the new year, things got suddenly and inexplicably worse. Suddenly she started waking up as often as every five minutes after appearing to be sound asleep. Sometimes she slept for up to two hours at a stretch, never longer. On average she awoke every half hour or so between 8 PM and midnight, and every hour to two hours thereafter. Often she woke up good and proper before dawn and wouldn't go back to sleep, or would only after more than an hour of rocking. With her waking up so often, I could no longer rely on nursing her to sleep every time, as sometimes she wasn't hungry. I've been constantly exhausted and sometimes feel like I'm starting to lose it.

Karen: I'm the tired mom. But I don't want to make my baby “cry it out.” I know it works for some, but I have serious doubts that it would work for Mari, who can be very persistent and is capable of screaming at the top of her lungs for ages. More importantly, I don't think it would be good for my baby. I think it would lead to her hating and fearing bedtime, and distrusting us. I'm a pretty “attached” parent in other ways – I try to respond quickly to her, carry her often, breastfeed, co-sleep (more about this later), and practice elimination communication. Why would I send her the message during the day that her physical and emotional needs are important, and give her the opposite signal at night?

Jon: The wonderful dad, but a busy one working on a PhD, making me the usual person to put Mari down for naps and for the night.

The goals, from more immediate to less immediate

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  Teach Mari to not wake up with every sleep cycle
• 
  
  Teach Mari to go to sleep, and back to sleep, without having to nurse or rock until she's totally asleep
• 
  
  Get Mari to take longer naps, so she naps 3-4 hours a day
• 
  
  Teach Mari to sleep at least five hours at a stretch, once a night
  
• 
  
  Teach Mari to go to sleep without having to be snuggled up to Mum or Dad
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  Teach Mari to fall asleep in her crib and stay asleep there until Mum is ready for bed
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  Teach Mari to go to sleep without physical contact from Mom or Dad right until the moment of falling asleep (we will continue to cuddle her to get her sleepy)
• 
  
  Teach Mari to sleep in her crib all night long
• 
  
  Get Mari to sleep eight hours at a stretch
  

The story today

As of today I've made only a few changes as I prepare Mari's new sleep plan. Today I made sure she had 3 naps, when she started to seem tired, though she fell asleep in the sling when we were out for a walk and steps from home. Then she woke up when we got in the house and got a second wind, and I couldn't get her to sleep until 4:30 – an hour after she first started showing signs of fatigue. She only napped for half an hour that time. I had thought Mari was moving toward just two naps, but actually it seems she still needs three, and she needs them closer together than I'd thought. Yes, she CAN stay up for up to four hours at a stretch, but that's probably twice as long or more than twice as long as she really should stay up – she's really overtired and frenetic at the end.

Tomorrow: the results from my logging of her sleep habits