Sleepy time stories: co-sleeping

There are many benefits to co-sleeping. The main one: everyone's happy. The baby is warm, cozy and safe. You can nurse very easily during the night, which means you sleep better too. 

We did the co-sleepign thing for a while. Then we tried having the critter sleep in his crib, in his room. Which worked out fine, except we missed him. 

Meredith Small explains that "the usually recommended solitary sleep is exactly the opposite of what is the naturally evolved sleep situation for babies, and tus not what the baby really needs." This seems to intuitively make sense.

In The Aware Baby  Aletha Solter share that her son slept on a mattress next to her until  "he was three-and-a-half years old, [when] his grandmother came to live with us, and he was quite happy to move into a room with her." Which give way to the only hiccuo in this otherwise lovely sleeping arrangement: when do you encourage the kid to sleep on his own? And is it awkward when he brings a girl home? Does dating make the fmaily bed uncomfortable?

Sleepy time stories: Cry it out babies

The ever popular CIO sleeping method for babies was created by Dr. Richard Ferber. Essentially, it consists of "teaching" your baby (of normal weight, aprox 6 months old, no health problems or pains) how to sleep on his own. The magic consists on putting your awake baby in the crib and walking out of the room. He will cry. You let him cry it out for a few minutes, go in to reassure him (without picking him up). You leave. He cries. You wait for another set interval of time. Go in. Non cuddly reassurance. And so on until he passes out from crying. This means he has learned how to sleep on his own.

One of the ideas behind this is that if you comfort your child by picking him up and helping him calm down in the safety of your embrace you are actually rewarding his crying. Manipulative beasts that they are, babies will then fake distress and cry on purpose to get you to pick them up.

Ferber, though, in 2006 loosened up a little and amended his theory. Reading between the lines it seems, at least to me, that he isn't willing to backtrack on what he said and the eminence that he has become, but he is leaving parents a lot of wiggle room. His new bottom line is: you know your baby, what is right for him, what you need and what he needs. Figure it out, suckers. I know, he leaves us back at square one and the baby is still awake.

Sleepy time stories: Contented little babies

Gina Ford is Britain's baby guru. Her cornerstone book, The New Contented Little Baby Book: the Secret to Calm and Confident Parenting, holds the secret: the CLB routines. The book goes into careful detail about routines appropriate for each stage of the baby's life. Everything is stipulated in the routine: the baby's sleeping, eating, bath, playtime and cuddle time. Don't worry, your sleeping, eating, bath, playtime and cuddle time is scheduled in as well.

Above all, stick to the routine - unless you have to pee outside of the stipulated potty break, in which case all hell will break lose.

It's 7 am, time for baby's first feeding of the day. Critter's asleep? Wake that darn baby!

Seriously.

His nap time slot has come and gone and still no sleeping? Well, you better keep him awake now until the next appropriate sleeping time.


If baby falls asleep while nursing before bedtime, wake him so he goes awake to his crib. "When cuddling him during the wind-down time, do not talk and avoid eye contact" (because he will feel safe in your love and warmth) "as it can overstimulate him and result in him becoming overtired and not settling". And, of course, baby needs to learn to fall asleep by himself in his crib, so there is a "crying-down" period.

The thing is, I'm sure this works. How could it not? The baby's needs are all met before they even arise. If not, just wait until the next carefully selected time interval.

Even if I didn't cringe at her suggestions, most days I'm organized enough to shower and change into clothes that somewhat match by noon, so I don't think the CLB routines would work with us. The CLB routines are "created to meet the natural sleep and feeding needs " of babies. Couldn't I just take cues straight from my baby? I'm sure he's aware of a baby's natural needs.

Sleepy time stories: the Panchu house way

There is no shortage of theories, books and experts on sleep. I'm going to try to go through some of them here, in the hope of posting even a word that might be a kernel of hope to parents of sleepless crying babies everywhere.

As an introduction to the topic I'll share with you (Wynn, my sister and PanchuMom reader Laurel... my audience just keeps getting larger and larger!) how we put Lucas to sleep.

We don't have a set sleeping schedule for him, we only put him to sleep when he's sleepy - he starts complaining and swatting his ear. We take him to our bed and either Wynn or I lie sideways facing him. We put our arms around him until he falls asleep. Sometimes Lucas will struggle a bit and get up. We let him do that a couple of times and lie him down again. If he seems to still have too much energy for sleeping we put him in his crib to bop about until he accepts he's sleepy. Then back to the bed. Usually by this point he'll be asleep before his head hits the bed. We give him a few minutes and then we transfer him to his crib.

So far this has worked. We're lucky that he doesn't wake up when we move him to the crib asleep. This is the "method" that works for us right now. Who knows, in two weeks it might need revising.

Obama and my son

Two people that made me very happy.

Lately, Lucas has been waking up at about 2 or 3 in the morning and staying up for about an hour. He is actually sleepy when this happens, but for some reason instead of falling back asleep he rolls around, sits up, falls back very groggy... during all this fun, I try to remember that he really is such a great kid and will eventually fall back asleep, and my husband is not sleeping out of calculated revenge but because he has to get up in a few hours to go to work, and if I were to wake him he would come and hang out with me and we would wonder together why some of us would think it was not the right time for sleeping. But not last night!

And in new mom lingo, "slept through the night" means he only woke up to nurse (twice) and fell right back to sleep. This was my first source of happiness this morning.

The other was when Wynn whispered (not to wake the still sleeping critter) that Obama had been elected. Best morning ever! This is looking to be a very good day.