While M has definitely figured out how to go to sleep at night well, she still wakes up a lot. I tried to tell myself not to go to her until she'd been in her crib for at least 7 hours, thinking that was a good time-frame for when she might actually be getting hungry. That worked perfectly for one night.
Then I ran into the problem that she was having total melt downs from the moment I put her in her car seat coming home from day care until she went to bed.
I am sort of slow, but after 3 evenings of this I decided to try pickng her up earlier and putting her to bed at a ridiculously early hour (despite everything and everyone I checked with saying 6:30-7pm is a good bedtime for her age).
THAT worked like a charm. She was her wonderful sweet little M self, and totally zonked out without any tears at all by 5:45pm.
But then she starts waking up at 1am, and maybe every 2.5 hours from then on out...
I do not have enough adrenaline for this schedule.
The answer for my sanity is to go to sleep early. But there is really no way I can go to sleep at 6pm, which would be what it would take to get a solid 5 hours. But I am trying to sleep train myslef to go to bed around 9:30pm.
And I am trying to find a good way to work my schedule so that I can pick M up at 4pm every day, but it is so hard not to have things get scheduled up until 5pm, since I work in the 12-hour-work-day-world. But I am working on it. One really nice thing about the super early bedtime, aside from having a happier baby which is obviously the best part of it, is that my brain still sort of functions at 6pm. So this evening I wrote 2 letters of recommedation and quickly perused a re-review for a journal after M went to sleep. Can you say "productive"? yippee!
Ethical/child torture question for you:
1) grandmother's retirement community is coming to a nighttime Christmas tree thing very close to my house on Thursday. It doesn't start until 6:30pm. I know it would mean the world to her if her grand daughter were there to meet her, esp in front of all her new friends. While M might be ok at the time because of all the excitement, do you think it is ok to torture one's child for something like this?
2) ditto for a volunteer santa thing I have going on on Sunday. It doesn't start until 6pm and is an hour away from where I live... I can likely be home by 8pm.
do you think it is ok to keep a 9 month old up way past her bedtime to accommodate some adult needs from time to time? Or, should I work a little harder on modifying my behavior and just say that I can't keep her out/up that long past her bedtime? so hard to find the line between me being over-protective & freaky and my being selfish and not respecting M's routine enough...
I've never commented before but enjoy your blog. Since no one's commented on this, I'll chime in. By the time second baby came along, I'd learned that almost nothing is worth messing up baby's schedule, especially if it ends up messing up MY sleep as well. But my vote here is for taking M to grandmother's event and not to the volunteer thing. You can beat a hasty retreat from the first one if needed, while gratifying grandma immensely; the Sunday thing sounds like too much work, with too much potential for a very difficult drive home.
ReplyDeleteI somehow missed this post -- I think it's one of the weird Blogger glitches that happens from time to time...
ReplyDeleteI pick up Smurf from daycare at 3:30, so he would have one long solid nap 4-6 pm (with lights on, but dimmed). Then I wake him up for dinner -- he's always comatose, but perks up at the sight of food -- then he plays with family until 8 or 8:30, and then it's bathtime and bedtime (sleeping in a pitch dark room). It works well, and when he's healthy and not pooping in the middle of the night, he'll sleep till 4 am, eat, and sleep for another 4 hours (now that days are short) -- I am knocking on wood and hoping the act of writing this up does not jinx the schedule! ;)
Babies have way too much fun at daycare and sometimes don't nap well there, so they are dead tired when they get home. Maybe just let Mads have a long nap when you arrive?
Btw, we didn't do it with the first two; with the first one I had no idea what I was doing, he went to bed too late and was a bad sleeper until we ferberized him at 18 months or so. The second one we kept at daycare for as long as they were open as I was on the tenure track, and was putting in as many hours at work as I could, and living on coffee and candy to stay awake. So don't feel like you are failing in the sleep department -- kids' sleep is not predictable, some people luck out, mostly it's survival one day at a time.
I tried to post here yesterday but Blogger wouldn't take it (btw I totally missed this post).
ReplyDeleteI pick up Smurf at 3:30 and he has a long nap 4-6pm (he's totally exhausted after his part day at daycare). I have to wake him up and he's all groggy, but then there's dinner and playing with family so he perks up. I start his bedtime routine around 8-8:30 so he is in bed asleep a little before 9. When he's healthy and not poopy he sleeps till 4 am, eats and goes right back to sleep. (I hope the act of typing this all up doesn't jinx it! Knocking on wood. :-)
Maybe not let Mads go down for the night early but make it a late-ish nap?
Good luck!