Even though I have been a mom before, I sometimes feel like it’s my first time all over again.
I catch myself constantly looking back at my older posts to see what I did with the other kids in terms of sleeping, napping, breastfeeding. But every kid is different.
EXCEPT…NONE OF MY KIDS LIKE TO SLEEP FOR ABOUT 4-6 MONTHS.
Jolee and I have found a pretty good routine during the day. We get up between 6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m. This is all based on when she actually wakes up. I do not wake her up. From there, we do the classic, eat, play, sleep routine. You can do a quick google search and see this is the go to routine for infants.
I feed her as soon as she wakes up.
Then her awake period is anywhere from 45 minutes – 1 hour.
I watch for general sleeping cues of yawning and then put her in her swing where she proceeds to take a 1 1/2 hour – 2 hour nap.
Upon waking from the nap, we repeat.
ALL. DAY. LONG.
Since I have had her, she has been pretty predictable. We have had just a couple of days when she was going through a growth spurt that she has wanted to eat more often or where her naps were a little off. But other than that, she has been a really great baby.
Until night time. We just do not have the night time figured out yet and with my return to work very quickly approaching…it’s stressing me out.
She is really all over the place. Sometimes she wants to take an extra nap. Sometimes she wants to go to sleep for the night at 6:30 p.m. Sometimes she wants to be awake until 10:00 p.m. I keep telling myself that everything will fall into place soon.
I have been trying to put her to sleep between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. I go into our room at 7:00 p.m., because it’s quiet, to get her to wind down and eat before bed. I swaddle, feed, burp.
Then, I do whatever works to get her to sleep. A lot of the time, I am outside with her. Being outside gets her to go to sleep pretty quick. We live on a busy road so I think the vehicles driving past are almost like white noise to her.
From there, I was holding her. I tried so many times to put her down in the bassinet next to our bed, but she just wasn’t having it. I had white noise going and everything. When she would wake up, I would try and get her to settle down, but she was too wound up and I would have to start the process all over again to get her to go to sleep. It was becoming very frustrating for the both of us.
So, the past couple of days, I have been using our swing and she goes to sleep almost instantly. I honestly don’t like her being in the swing because I don’t want her to get used to it, but for the moment, it gives me peace at night, so we will roll with it until it’s time to transition her out of it.
Her swing is in the living room and that’s where Scott and I are at night. We have to dim the lights, be quiet…the list goes on. It’s not ideal, but at least she is getting some type of sleep.
FROM THERE…it’s pretty awful.
Before I actually go to bed at night, I take her out of the swing and put her in bed with me. I tried the bassinet multiple times, and she just wasn’t having it. I was tired and exhausted of having to restart the process of putting her to sleep over and over, so for my sanity, I just decided she would continue to sleep with me.
But, she sleeps awful with me. She is such a loud sleeper. She grunts and groans literally the entire night. There is no way she can actually be asleep the whole time.
She is eating so much in the middle of the night too. About every 2 hours. And she will not burp in the middle of the night which gives her a belly ache, hence why she grunts and groans until it comes out. She has really bad gas too in the middle of the night. She farts all night long. I have tried gas drops when I feed her at night and gripe water, but nothing seems to help.
I honestly feel like she just needs the pacifer to be able to soothe her back to sleep, but she will not take one.
I have a gallon ziplock bag full of pacifers and I have tried them all. She will take one for a little bit everyone once in a while, but nothing consistent at all. AND if I try to give her one in the middle of the night, forget it. She loses her shit.
At this point with Briar, she was already in her crib in her own room. I am really hesitant to do this with Jolee and I don’t know why. Briar was sleeping her first stretch of sleep in her crib and then coming to bed with me. But, she also had a pacifier to help.
Poor Raelynn, I honestly don’t remember anything about her first 4 months of life expect just trying to survive. She slept in the bed with me until she was 4 months old then she transitioned straight to the crib.
I am sleeping really horribly with Jolee in the bed with me, but it’s the only way that we are both getting some type of sleep/rest without both of us losing an entire night.
Overall, it’s been fairly good with Jolee. I think prior experience has allowed me to take a step back and realize that the first couple of week and months are all about transition.
I just need to realize if I have a bad day, tomorrow will be different and she will want or need something else.
Lucky for me, there have been more good days than bad.
