Time to get tough?

My boys went in for their 4 month checkups today (WOW- 4 months? Seriously?) and other than affirming what I already know- they have huge heads, are really short and only have a bit of fat on them- see link, (mostly in their faces, LOL!)

I'm nervous.

See, the Ped said they are old enough (4 months) and heavy enough (Orion is littler @ 12 lbs, 10 oz) to sleep at least 1 stretch of 6 hours at night. Currently the best we've EVER seen is 1 stretch of 4.5 hours.

OK. They are EBF so it's hard for me to know that the shriek in the middle of the night is not hunger. It's not. Right?

She also said swaddle away until they don't like it anymore... so we're back to the swaddle (I'm sure the boys are happy about that!) Little do they know what's in store for them. :spiteful:

I guess I'm just not sure I'M ready for this.

Any assurances would be appreciated.

 

here's what i've learned about being a mom - trust your instincts! take your doc's advice into consideration but if it doesn't feel right to you, or at least not the right time, then don't worry about it. do what feels right to you. you will never regret that. :good:

that being said, i'll let you know what we started doing at 4 months & maybe you'll find it useful. when the girls were 4 months old, with the help of a sleep consultant, we implemented a bedtime (7:00pm) & then scheduled nursing windows through the night - at that time my girls were still really small, so our nursing windows were very 3 hours (10:00pm, 1:00am, 4:00am & wake at 7:00am). if they woke up within a half hour of a nursing window, i would nurse them & put them back to bed. if it was outside of that half hour window, we would soothe them in other ways. it took a couple of nights, but they did eventually consolidate their feedings to those times. and then eventually, it helped make it really clear when they were dropping a feeding. it worked really well for us. GL!

 

If your instinct is saying no, then I'd listen to it. YOU are the world's #1 expert on your babies, and if you're not comfortable pushing them to go longer at night, then don't.

You could try other ways of soothing them when they wake up, but if they're hungry, they're going to let you know about it!

Oh, one more thing - how early were they born? Even if they were only a few weeks early, that definitely matters at this age.

 

With my twins we let them fuss it out at bedtime around 16 weeks, but I still fed them during the night until 9 months. My pedi told me it was still reasonable for them to eat 1x during the night until 9 months. Mine were 6 weeks early.

That said, Matthew is 4 months old and has been STTN since 9 weeks or so, but recently started waking again due to teething pain and nursing is the only thing that soothes him back to sleep.

 

They were 37w 5d (my water broke 2 days before my scheduled C-section).

I should say, too, that they tend to go down early, around 7, & have NO problems going back to sleep after eating. During the day, I may have to rock them/ encourage them to fall asleep. At night, they just scream to be fed. Sometimes not even opening their eyes. There have been a couple of occasions where they've been wet, too, & in cloth diapers. Anybody have experience with babies in cloth at night? Obviously if they are waking due to wetness, I'd like to honor that as well.

This stuff is HARD!

Thanks to each reply thus far. Any futher thoughts are appreciated.

 

Mine were in cloth too, and we always changed diapers at night feedings, usually in the middle of a feeding (when they came off to be burped) to wake them up enough to eat well when we got back to it. They always went back down easily. I'm convinced that they almost never woke up for any reason other than hunger. Over time, they gave us longer and longer intervals.

It really sounds like yours are hungry. OTOH, you need SLEEP! Have you thought about having DH give them at least one bottle during the night so that you can catch a longer stretch?

Also, I know you're probably feeding them plenty during the day, but you could always try squeezing in yet another nursing session to see if it would make a dent in their appetites at night.

Another thought - I haven't read it myself, but there's a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution - maybe someone else here has read it & could tell you if it's worth a look?

Good luck! I know it's hard. :hug:

 

I didn't read all, but here are my thoughts.

swaddling... we did this until 6 months. I worked really hard to make the swaddles tight so their arms couldn't get loose. I believe it was my lifesaver for getting them to sleep more.

eating during the day. for the longest time they nursed every 2 1/2 hours during the day, and then slept longer at night... by 2 months they were sleeping 8 hrs.

cloth diapers, we do that too... I don't remember having a huge issue that early on, but now it seems they are leaking. I did figure out when I try to overstuff them, then there were huge gaps in the legs and the urine will just pour out... so don't overstuff (of you are using pockets)... I use BumGenius and have the best results with about 2 of the normal inserts... of course ours are older now. but make sure to add something extra than is in your daytime dipes.

and if need be, you might use disposable at nights - at least until you get them to sleeping more, so that you know its not a leakage problem.

good luck! yes, sleep is so important!

 

oh, and I did a lot of patting their backs when they were about 6 months old, they started teething then, and had a growth spurt... and I was tired of getting woken up... I followed most recommendations from The Baby Whisperer.

 

I can't agree more. Totally and 100% well said!!

I listened to the doc about my first born against my instinct and now she is the worst sleeper of my entire crew. Its been better the last yr, but come on! She is 7!! I never did any sleep training with the boys who are 5.5 and 4.5, and they sleep WONDERFULLY no matter where we are. They are confident enough to go to the bathroom on their own at night, they know when they call I will come - and its usually a good reason so I don't mind coming, and we can go to hotels, camping, sleep overs and they sleep awesome. I nursed when I felt they were hungry, I soothed if there was no possible way they were hungry (ie, 1 hour after a feed)

It didn't damage them in any way to follow my instinct in what was right for MY kids. I wish I'd done that for our daughter....

 

Yes, trust your insticts. Like Holly, I'd change the diaper in the middle of the feeding. I can't imagine not changing it if the baby wakes at night. I personally feel that at this age the babies are waking due to hunger. I don't think I could not get up to help them at this age. :hug: It's hard. The time does fly by... although at the time it doesn't feel like it.

 

Please excuse my minor tangent here, but this has been on my mind as well w/my 4 month olds (who only weigh around 9lbs at this point). I just got Dr. Weissbluth's healthy sleep happy twins book (something like that) and find it totally incompatible with bf-ing. I never had in mind to sleep train (certainly no CIO for us!) but thought I would check it out b/c everyone in first year (or apparent majority) really like his primary book and this one was specific to twins. It made me feel like I am building up this dependency by co-sleeping and nursing to sleep, but yet I need to nurse at night to keep my supply up and co-sleeping is generally recommended for supply issues too. I can't sleep train a baby that is sleeping right next to me. We will move to cribs in the next month or two, but this book states 3-4 months is the optimal time to sleep train.

 

It wasn't until our 9 month check-up that the pedi said to try to go for an 8-hour stretch at night. And he is extremely pro-breastfeeding, as his wife is. She is our tiny, very active one and he said at this age she needs that time to be building up those fat stores. Before then he always said go with our gut, but if she would eat, feed her. I think trust your instincts. I know at that age I changed the diaper no matter what feeding time it was. Good luck to you!

 

Thanks, ladies. :wub:

In the last couple of days they are napping in their cribs fairly well (not as long, but they are teething, too, which may be waking them up).

DH is of the opinion that Sebastian can go longer than Orion... which would stand to reason. Orion was born with low blood sugar, is smaller and is consistently the baby who cries to be fed. So in a couple of days (I selfishly would like to sleep decently tonight- I actually don't feel too sleep-deprived, but don't want LESS sleep than usual) we will try having Orion sleep in our room in a pack n play and nursing him just whenever, letting Sebastian wake up on his own.

We do every 2 hours (no more than 2.5) during the day pretty religiously, so I think the supply is good.

I'm thinking he can be trained to do 4 hour stretches, but we can wait until that pesky 1st tooth comes through.

Thanks for the encouragement- my ped has little kids (a baby, too) who she nurses, but I just don't think my little guy, in particular, can do it right now.

I'm a softie- who knew? :lol:

 

You are not a softie!!! you are a mum doing whats best for HER kid!!

 

we did something similar when the girls were about 6 months old. i noticed it was always Riley who was waking up (she's our smaller baby) so i had her sleep in our room with us & yup, Danika started sleeping 9 hours through. about a month later Riley did as well, so we put her back in their room.

 

I agree 100%! You're a brave, dedicated, tough mother for going with your gut.

 

Such smart ladies here! You need to be comfortable with what you are doing. I have no advice whatsoever to offer. My 9 year old doesn't sleep independently or ttn either! :headbang: We will survive, just with a lot fewer brain cells! :laughing:

 

my ped told me that at four months (adjusted) as well, as most will.....however, mine are 2 years old and still don't sttn. and when they wake up and want something, i give it to them (w/in reason). they are my chldren, not my peds, and i'll decide how much of their needs i'm goign to fulfill.

good luck!

 

Underscoring all PP! You and your DH the only one who REALLY knows who your little ones are. Kids are so different from one another - and they're different over time, too. So you could sleep train them now and find that teething totally disrupts things and you have to do it again. As a very wise LC told me, there are many opportunities to sleep train, and most children - even well "trained" ones - will have periods of waking more often until they're about 4.

Trust your instincts. It sounds like they're very solid.

 

this is very true! as someone who sleep trained her girls at a young age but just went through over a month of multiple night wakings, this is something you really need to trust your instincts on. i don't regret doing the sleep training when i originally did (i'm happy to chat more in detail about it if anyone would like to know), but i'm more hesitant to do it now, i think mostly because i did do it when they were younger. if that makes any sense... ardon:

 

can you share more of your experience? I just read Weissbluth's book geared toward twins and then I read the sleeping chapter of Dr. Sear's "Baby book" which I feel are opposite ends of the spectrum. I know I really don't have much tolerance for CIO beyond 10min before I feel compelled to soothe, etc. But I do fear a burnout with a 100% AP approach. Looking for a balance and feel that CIO doesn't really work when breastfeeding b/c (at least for me) I am always feeding on demand. Was going to post separately about this but since you said you would share would love to hear your experience.

 

yes, i would be happy to - life's pretty hectic at the moment, but i promise i will find a moment to sit down & write it all down. it's just not going to be tonight... :lazy:

 

an interesting thing about Dr. Sears is that he's the first to say that as much as he believes in AP he believes more in doing what's right for your family. he was in Calgary recently with his wife to speak (i wasn't able to attend but had several friends who went) and they commented on how often he talked about finding the solution that worked for you & taking the basic tenets of AP & adjusting them to work with your family. i used to dislike Dr. Sears because i felt like i could never live up to his ideal AP mothering approach & just got pretty sick of feeling guilty about it but the more i've actually read about him & heard about him, the more i realize we're kind of two peas in a parenting pod. i also believe you need to do what works.

so, with that little preamble here's my story - i was woefully unprepared for what life with two newborns was going to be like. throughout my pregnancy, i was so concerned about L&D that all my reading was about that. not once did i think to pick up a book on newborn care or habits or anything at all. :blush: as silly as this may sound to some, i didn't really get that newborns would be waking every 2 - 3 hours around the clock or just how exhausting that was going to be or just how out of it/emotional i was going to be. to top it off, my girls were 6 weeks early which came with it's own host of issues (mostly BFing). anyway, my girls spent 2 weeks in the NICU & when they came home they wanted to be held. all.the.time. since we had a lot of help around we went ahead & held them. any squeak, peep, gurgle, or noise emanating from either of them meant up into someone's arms. i don't think it was the wrong thing to do because i think they truly did need to be held a lot, but i also think we could have done more to encourage them to lay on their own as well. it's a bit of a chicken or the egg conundrum - did they need to be held a lot because they needed to be held a lot? or did they need to be held a lot because we held them a lot? if that makes sense.

at first DH & i would each sleep with a baby at night & it wasn't great but it was workable. at least we all would get some sleep that way. it felt like no matter what we did, they would not sleep anywhere else. looking back, i realize that there were things we could have done to help - swaddling, more soothing, white noise, etc. i don't know how much of a difference it would have made, but maybe enough that we wouldn't have found ourselves in the situation we did. anyway, it got to the point though, where neither of the girls were happy to stay with DH very long. eventually, i was literally carrying them 24 hours a day (usually doubled up in a sling) - except for those times when another woman was over & i could pass one off, i had them both all the time. including at night. i would have been happy to continue co-sleeping if they would have slept on the mattress next to me or in a co-sleeper, but by then, even that wasn't cutting it. they had to sleep on me. i had this crazy set up in our bed with pillows so that i was reclining (not laying flat), with pillows under my arms for support & the sling to keep them in place. DH was sleeping on the couch. it worked fairly well except that i wasn't sleeping - i would doze & snooze, but i couldn't fall into a deep sleep. i was too worried about one of them falling out of the sling, or turning into the sling & suffocating. after a couple of weeks of this i was at my breaking point. i was crying all the time & couldn't function (i was also still really struggling with BFing which was tearing my heart up because i thought i was going to have to quit). i absolutely couldn't think straight.

a friend of mine referred me to a sleep consultant that she had worked with. i was a little skeptical at first but i was also desperate. i didn't know what i was doing & could see no way out of the mess we were in. people kept saying that they would grow out of it, that it was just a phase, but the thought of not sleeping even for another week made me feel like i was drowning. i called Dawnn (the sleep consultant) and we really hit it off. she was calm, reassuring, and made sense to me. i told her i wasn't keen on CIO but i also didn't have the energy or mental accuity to use a slower approach. i needed my girls to sleep in their cribs. now. so Dawnn had us track our current eat/sleep schedule for three days & send it to her (she lives in a different province so we worked via phone/email). she then put together a personalized sleep plan for us that took into account the girls age & weight. at this point the girls were 3.5 months old (so 2 months adjusted) and the goal wasn't to get them to STTN - it was just to get them to sleep in their cribs. anyway, the plan consisted of a modified CIO (go in & pat/shush for a minute in increasing intervals) until the girls fell asleep. the first night was god awful. the girls cried for 2 hours before falling asleep. the next night was about 40 minutes & then after that there were a few weeks of inconsistent nights (sometimes they wouldn't cry at all, sometimes they'd cry for 10 - 15 minutes or sometimes up to a half hour), but after that we've never had trouble with them sleeping in their cribs. in fact, we've had the opposite problem - now they're crib snobs & won't sleep anywhere else. in terms of nursing, i mentioned earlier in this thread about how we set up the nursing windows at night. so i was still getting up with them every 3 hours at night to nurse (well, at that time, DH would prep them each a bottle of EBM & feed them while i pumped - it was the fastest way to get everyone back to sleep as they still weren't great nursers) but they would go back to sleep in their cribs. almost immediately, both girls dropped the 1:00am feeding. and that made all the difference in the world to my sanity - 6 blissful hours of sleep in a row (give or take). at that point, 1 hour of sleep, real sleep, not dozing or snoozing, seemed blissful. suddenly i was able to be a mother & to feel confident in what i was doing during the day. i was still tired but i wasn't on the brink anymore. i started to feel like maybe, just maybe, i might know what i was doing - or that i could at least figure things out.

so, that's why i don't regret doing CIO even though it's not PC to do it at such a young age. it was that, or i would have gone over the edge. and once we started the process it just seemed like things got better from there. i became more & more positive & that helped with everything else. i would say i regret that we found ourselves in a situation that i felt i needed to do CIO. i feel that if i had known more about newborns & their sleep habits & how to begin encouraging good sleep habits right from day one, we might have been able to avoid CIO. or at least, waited until they were older. anyway, it's not my favorite tool in the parenting tool box, but it is an effective one & i do use it when i feel it's needed (although i haven't had to use it in a long time now). the girls did eventually STTN on their on (Danika at 6 months old & Riley at 7 months old). i would nurse them before bed at 7:00pm, then we would give them a dreamfeed between 10:00pm - 11:00pm & then they would usually sleep until 6:00am - 7:00am. i don't think we dropped the dreamfeed until they were closer to 9 months old & we were doing 3 solids meals a day. anyway, i hope that helps - if you have any other questions, i'd be happy to answer.