To Sleep, or Not To Sleep?

This is yet another post about baby/toddler sleep.  To read my earlier posts you can see the series I wrote on using The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.

Still sleeping long after I got up

To Sleep:

Everything I read gives ranges for the amount of sleep a child needs at various ages.  There are dire warnings of stunted brain development and increased illnesses if your child doesn’t get enough sleep.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a perfectionist.  I want the best for my baby, so that means I aim to get her the maximum sleep in the ranges given.  I was frustrated from the start when as an infant I couldn’t coax Anastasia to sleep a full 16 hours per day.  Currently, the sources I’ve read suggest 12-14 hours for a 1-3 year old.  I’ve been aiming to get Anastasia to sleep 14, since more is better, right?  I’m constantly frustrated that I cannot get her to sleep that much and the amount I DO get her to sleep (avg 13 – 13 1/2) I have to spend hours to coax her to sleep, and then she wakes up often.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution, The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep, Raising Your Spirited Child, and various online articles all seem to indicate that the inability to fall asleep is a result of being overtired and not getting enough sleep.  (I often hear or read the mantra “Sleep begets sleep”) So I have constant evidence that Anastasia isn’t getting enough sleep, because she won’t go to and stay asleep.

Not To Sleep:

Then the most curious thing happened.  A few days ago when Anastasia finally fell asleep for her nap, she did so right after indicating she had to go potty.  I had a rather good idea that she had to poop and having had a couple other misses from prioritizing sleep over potty, I did NOT want to clean out a poopy diaper again (seriously gross!  I’m so thankful to EC that we’ve had so few..).  So after about 15 minutes, when I knew she was in a deep sleep, I brought the potty over to by her bed and took her pants & diaper off while she slept.  Then I placed her on the potty and cued her (hoping for a dream poop).  She woke when I placed her on the potty and cried, but she did poop.  Then I quickly got her back in her diaper and tried to nurse her back to sleep.  I thought she was asleep and then used Pantley’s Gentle Removal Method.  Suddenly Anastasia was wide awake.  She did not fall asleep again that afternoon though I spent 3 HOURS rocking, nursing, and singing to her.

Surprisingly, she didn’t seem tired the rest of the day until the end of supper.  She went to bed at her normal time and fell asleep in just 5-10 minutes.  The best part is, she slept 2 HOURS STRAIGHT before waking.  That whole night she slept really long chunks of time (for her) and slept well into the morning.  It was amazing.  The next day I went back to battling for sleep but she wouldn’t fall asleep for her nap until the time she usually wakes up.  I still tried to get her to go to sleep at her normal time, but it wasn’t happening.  She finally did fall asleep a couple hours later though, and again slept well.

This brought me to thinking about the times Anastasia has slept well.  They’ve all been when we were busy or visiting family/friends out of town.  On those days we don’t push sleep.  We just find a quiet, dark place for her crib mattress (we bring the mattress along because she doesn’t like the pack ‘n play anymore) and go through her nap or bedtime routine with her once she seems tired (and I mean more than a single eye-rub).  Those days usually are not a battle at all.  She reliably gets 12 hours sleep in a 24 hour period and usually sleeps better too.  I had previously chalked this up to her being more tired out from the extra people and attention.

I’m starting to suspect that I’ve been trying to get Anastasia to sleep too much.  Dr. Sears is the only source I’ve read that says that high-needs babies need less sleep than others.  Maybe he’s right.  Anastasia can do 12 hours without all the fuss and effort.  Maybe that’s all she needs?  I don’t know if it is possible that I’ve been trying to get her to sleep too much.  I’ve never read anything along those lines before.  However, I think I’m going to start experimenting with that, while paying close attention to her behavior, mood, and health to see if perhaps this is the issue.  It’s hard to believe this could be the case when our god-son sleeps 12 hours solid at night and then a 3 hour nap during the day (and he’s almost 3).  I suppose different children could have different sleep needs though?

What about You?

If you have young ones, what have you learned about sleep?  How do you know if your child is getting enough or not enough sleep?  Have you ever struggled to help them sleep?  How much sleep was/is your child getting at 16 months of age?

A Sleep Update

This is yet another post about baby/toddler sleep.  To read my earlier posts you can see the series I wrote on using The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.

Carrying her “sleep-sleep sounds” after her nap.

We’ve still been working on sleep here.  It’s been about a month since my last sleep update.  Here is where we’ve been:

Dr. Harvey Karp & The Happiest Baby series

Since my last post I picked up and read Dr. Harvey Karp’s The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years.  I found his DVD’s on babies and toddlers to be helpful so I decided to try his book on sleep.  I only read the last few chapters as the rest pertained to younger babies.  If I’m ever blessed with another child I may go back and read those chapters too.  I found some of his suggestions to be helpful and particularly found the part about white noise to be helpful.  Apparently the fan we are using, isn’t quite the right sound.

I purchased his The Happiest Baby On the Block: Soothing White Noise Sleep Sounds CD and noticed a change right away.  We exclusively use the rain track (#6) on an MP3 player set to repeat.  It fades in and out so the abrupt change of track doesn’t wake the baby, but even those fade-ins and outs would sometimes wake her.  So I edited the MP3 using Audacity on my Mac, and turned it into a 3 hour track instead of a 15 minute one.  Much better.  Dr. Karp recommends starting the white noise a bit ahead of bedtime to help baby relax and mentally prepare for sleeping.  This seems to work.  It has been several weeks now and Anastasia hasn’t fought getting ready for bed or going to sleep ever since.  She actually tries to cooperate and go to sleep and gets really excited about her “sleep-sleep sounds.” If we forget to turn them on, she will remind us!

Still, it usually takes Anastasia 1+ hours to fall asleep at bedtime and close to that for nap time.  She’s not fighting going to sleep anymore, so why is it taking so long?  Why does she still wake up often?

Two Years Ago Today…

As I quietly go about the house cleaning up after Anastasia’s explosive lunch, I can’t help but reflect.  May 22, 2011.  That day would forever change my life but I didn’t know it.  May 22, 2011 is Anastasia’s two year *conception anniversary.  Since we believe that life begins at conception, then in a manner of speaking, Anastasia is two – though she’s only been out of the womb for 15 months.

What a difference between life then and life now.  Back then I could clean my whole house in a single day.  Another day I’d do all the cooking for the week.  I worked two days a week, and the rest I either volunteered, managed our finances, and tried to further my learning through books and iTunesU courses.

Today my days are spent trying to balance time with my daughter, keeping the house acceptably clean, and cooking healthy meals for the family.  None of those three things are ever actually all balanced on the same day.  Some days my house is a pig pen (figuratively speaking) because I haven’t been able to vacuum in two weeks.  Other times we end up eating leftovers for the third night in a row, or my husband will cook meat on the grill that he picked up 20 minutes before at WalMart.  Some days, sadly, Anastasia doesn’t get all the attention she needs and we have her grabbing me and fussing (both in and out of the sling) while I frantically try to get some sort of dinner put together.

But you know what?  I would not trade these unpredictable  unbalanced, crazy days for anything.  I do not miss my afternoons at the computer, working on an iTunesU course, finances, or searching for answers to our fertility problems.  Those days may have been orderly and clean, but they were oh so lonely.  I may have less time now and be much less proficient at my job, but I have a fuller heart, a lighter step, and a happier mind.  May 22, 2011 will be a date I remember forever.

Anastasia, I love you more than you’ll ever know.  You are an answered prayer, an absolute joy to your mommy and your daddy.  Not a day goes by without us thanking God for blessing us with you.  Your smiles, giggles, and hugs can melt any bad day and make it a great one.  My prayer for you today, is that God grants us to communicate to you daily that you are loved no matter what, that you are treasured, that you are precious.  Happy second year of life!

*Conception takes place within 24 hours of the egg being released, otherwise the egg dies and there is no pregnancy.  With charting I can pinpoint the day I ovulated, but not the moment.  It is conceivable then that conception took place on May 23, but since there is no way to know for certain we have chosen to go with the ovulation date.

“The No-Cry Sleep Solution” – General Update

Just after a nap before sleep got awful again

This is part of my series chronicling how “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley works for us. You can read the introduction post here.

My last post was the day 20 log, which looked like we had made a lot of progress.  I think we had.  But something happened the next day and things have been downhill since.  I suspect the molars started moving again, or perhaps I got uptight again, or maybe it was because she was on the cusp of walking, or maybe all three?  Anastasia’s sleep had drastically shortened again.

We would have periods were she would just sleep 20 minutes or so before waking up screaming.  It would take 2 hours to get her to fall asleep.  In general things got bad then worse and I was very discouraged.  Naps became more difficult too.  Suddenly I was fighting for an hour or more to get her to take a nap which was getting shorter and shorter.

My husband finally convinced me to just go with the flow (not easy for a organized/scheduled/perfectionist) and if she wasn’t going to fall asleep, just let her get back up and try again later.  I grew up in a bit more of an authoritarian household than he did and at first I was worried that his suggestion would let her “win” and cause her to fight us on more things.  The more he explained it, however, the more I realized that even I have trouble sleeping some days.  When adults have trouble sleeping, don’t the experts recommend that you get up and go into a different room and do something for a while then try again?  Otherwise, supposedly you get even less sleep because you get frustrated.  Hmmm.  I suppose that toddlers can have trouble sleeping too!

Things have gone a bit better since that conversation.  I’ve stopped trying to force naps (and she’s started going to sleep better again).  I’ve also stopped putting her in her toddler bed at night and just go straight to the memory foam floor bed.  In fact, the last two nights I have simply rocked/nursed for 20-30 minutes and then laid down with her on the mattress while she is still awake.  It has reduced falling asleep time from 2+ hours to less than 1.  I feel like this change in perspective for me, and change in how I approach sleep with Anastasia, has really improved our relationship.  I’m enjoying her again, and I think she can tell the difference.

Anastasia still isn’t sleeping in long stretches without me the way she did in the days leading up to the day 20 log, but last night she did get in a 2 hour stretch at one point before I went to bed.  I was thrilled!  We are back to co-sleeping full time and I think we will have to do this at least while teeth are moving.  I hope they come in soon though.  Between the night waking and the pain on her face when she wakes up crying and holding various regions of her jaw, I’m ready to be done with teething.

Since Anastasia is such a sensitive child (did I mention that she can’t sleep in polyester?), I don’t think I’ll be doing the logs every 10 days like the book recommends.  We’re still trying to employ the tactics suggested but anytime anything comes up, it throws our results out the window.  Instead, I’ll just periodically update you on how things are going.  This means you will likely only see updates when I feel like we are making progress, or things are going horribly wrong.  :)

“The No-Cry Sleep Solution” – Day 20 Log

This is part of my series chronicling how “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley works for us. You can read the introduction post here.

In my last post in this series I described some of the changes we made during our break from officially following the No Cry Sleep Solution.  I finally took the time to re-start and do the Day 20 Logs last week.  I am posting them here and will share my thoughts at the bottom of each log.

Her naps definitely seem to be improving now that she is sleeping in her own room in her toddler bed.  It takes longer for her to fall asleep, but her nap seems to be getting longer without me needing to go in and help her to fall back asleep.  The day before this log, we actually got a 2 1/2 hour nap with her only needing help after the first 30 minutes and the last two hours she did by herself!

I really feel like our routine helps a lot.  The problem is that it takes up the whole evening.  Sometimes it takes her longer to eat so she has less wind-down time.  Also, now that summer is approaching, it is light out quite late and that makes it hard to dim things.  Even with the shades drawn, it is very bright in most of the house.  Her bedroom has black-out curtains (that dim things a bit but don’t make it actually black) but it isn’t realistic to put black-out curtains throughout the whole house.

Things seem like they are getting better.  It still takes an hour for her to fall asleep, but she is sleeping in longer chunks of time.  The night before this log, she actually started the night with a 3 hour segment of sleep!  Unfortunately, as you will see in later posts, this log was the beginning of a decline for her.  I will discuss that in the next post.

This comparison log is actually rather gratifying to look at.  It is nice to see that we have made progress, even if some weeks it doesn’t feel that way.  We still have a long way to go, but someday she’ll be sleeping through the night!

Waste Not, Want Not – How to Quickly Cut Down a Queen Sheet into a Twin

I’ve put off doing a sleep log for the No Cry Sleep Solution since Anastasia came down with an awful cold.  So in the meantime I thought I’d share this tutorial.  As I mentioned in my last post: “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” – Revisted, I cut down some worn out Queen sized fitted sheets to fit onto our new Twin mattress for Anastasia.  Here is how to do it, quick and dirty like.  There is certainly a more refined way with prettier results, but I don’t have a lot of time in my sewing room these days so I just wanted something quick and functional. First, I started with a Queen sized fitted sheet  that had a large hole worn into it.

Queen-sized sheet with large worn hole

Since my sheet has stripes lengthwise down the sheet, it became very easy to find the stripe closest to the hole that was intact.  I traced that to the edge and then placed a pin in the elastic edge on either side of where I plan to cut.  Make sure the pins actually go through the elastic (ask me how I know):

Place pins in elastic on either side of planed cut.

Next, if you have a serger, it makes this project even quicker.  I used the blade on my serger to cut down the edge of the good stripe and finish the edge all in one go:

Cut straight down the length of the sheet.

Do the same on each side of the hole.  You will need a total of 38″ in good width for the sheet.  37″ for the width of the Twin mattress, and 1″ to give us a 1/2″ seam allowance.  If you end up with plenty of good width, you will want as much of it to be on the same side as possible, that way your seam will be towards the side of the sheet, rather than in the middle.

Again, this is the quick & dirty (yet functional) method, not the pretty method.  If you wanted to do it pretty, you would need much more good width on one side, and you would need to make the corners and add elastic yourself.  This method is utilizing the good parts from the old sheet and piecing them together in the quickest way possible.

Pin both good sides, right-sides together:

Pin right-sides together

Finally, stitch a 1/2″ seam allowance down the length of the sheet through both layers:

Stitch down the length with a 1/2″ seam allowance

… And the finished product!

Twin fitted sheet cut down from a worn out Queen fitted sheet

Notes:

• A Queen sheet is actually a bit longer than a Twin.  Since there was elastic all the way around the sheet, I chose not to shorten the length of the sheet.  You can certainly shorten the length with the same method we used to shorten the width if you so choose.
• The flat sheet I just left alone and folded in half lengthwise when making the bed.  You could always cut that down to size and hem the cut side(s) if you wish.

So what sorts of things do you like to recycle and reuse in your home?

“The No-Cry Sleep Solution” – Revisted

This is part of my series chronicling how “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley works for us. You can read the introduction post here.

In my last post I mentioned that we would be taking a short break during the busyness of Holy Week and for Ana to teeth her molars.  Holy Week has of course come and gone.  However, Ana still hasn’t popped her molars.  She has days where she is clearly working on them, grabbing her teeth, sticking anything and everything into the back of her mouth, etc.  Other days, it appears the molars are giving her minimal problems.  It is quite unpredictable.  We are still working on her sleep though, trying to remain flexible and sympathetic to those bad teething days.

New Mattress

We’ve made a few changes since my last post that are aimed at minimizing discomfort as well as moving Anastasia out of our bed.  It seemed that our movement in our sleep was disrupting Anastasia’s and so it seemed time to wean her from our bed to her own bed.  The first thing we did was to purchase this memory foam mattress (just the mattress) from Slumberland (we found it on sale for $199).  We were promised it would last from “crib to collage” so it seemed a worthy investment for such a comfortable mattress.

The memory foam mattress went at the foot of our bed where the crib mattress used to be.  (we are storing the crib mattress and using it as her travel bed when we go visiting for the day).  The memory foam mattress has a 400 ct sheet on it that I cut down from a queen sheet with worn holes in it (had just enough good sheet left to make a twin sheet from it – tutorial coming).  We immediately saw a difference in the length of Anastasia’s sleep.  While her naps were still in 45 min increments.  We routinely began to see 1.5 – 2 hour sleep increments after the initial 45 min increment at night – while she was sleeping by herself.  We hadn’t seen that since she was 6 months old and before teething.

At this point, I would sleep the night on the memory foam mattress with Anastasia following her first wake-up once I had gone to bed.  Still, once my husband and I went to bed she seemed to wake up more frequently.  We did have the mattress up against the boxspring to our Queen, so it is possible she felt our movements there or mine when co-sleeping on the memory foam mattress.

Nursery Changes

Last Tuesday, we decided to move Anastasia out of our room altogether (now DH doesn’t have to use the dining room as his closet!)  We rearranged the furniture in her nursery (with the crib now converted to a toddler bed with a more supportive mattress than before).  Both Anastasia’s toddler bed and memory foam mattress are in the nursery now.  Anastasia is taking her naps in the toddler bed and starting out the night there too.  Once she wakes up after I’ve gone to bed, I’ve been taking her down to the memory foam mattress on the floor, and co-sleeping with her there.  The nice thing about this is that the diaper changing & pottying are now in the same room as sleeping so it doesn’t disrupt her sleep as much if she wakes up (or in the midst of falling asleep) to use the potty.

“The No-Cry Sleep Solution” Helps

Sleeping in her toddler bed never would have worked before, but I’ve been applying many of the things I learned from “The No-Cry Sleep Solution.”  First of all, we’ve been sticking fairly close to the routine we put together at the start of this process.  The times are not always exact because we both have evening commitments on Wednesdays and on other days things sometimes just push back bedtime, but the routine is the same.  So following our bedtime routine, I rock and nurse Anastasia to sleep in the glider (so much more comfortable than the rocker in our bedroom!) and then use Pantley’s Gentle Removal Plan.  Once she is asleep and not nursing, I move her to the toddler bed.  She generally wakes up a bit and I just “shhh” and pat her back until she returns to sleep, usually just a few seconds.  She will then sleep anywhere from 45 min to 2 hours!

I have noticed that when she wakes up in her toddler bed, I can usually nurse and rock her back to sleep, use Pantley’s Gentle Removal Plan, and put her back to bed in her toddler bed.  However, once I bring her to bed with me on the memory foam mattress and let her nurse completely to sleep, she won’t go back to sleep the rest of the night without nursing to sleep completely AND she wakes up more.  I need to be serious about not taking her to bed with me so early in the night…

I will be doing a log soon and restarting the whole No-Cry Sleep Solution business in ernest.  With the things I’ve learned and the changes I’ve seen, I’m starting to feel optimistic that perhaps she can be sleeping on her own all night by the end of summer.  We shall see!