For the first three months of her life, Brooke made all of the rules. She ate when she wanted to, played when she wanted to, and slept when she wanted to. We started noticing some natural patterns developing, like her need to take a nap about 1 1/2 hours after she woke up in the mornings. We also noticed that she showed only a few signs of getting tired prior to having a fit, and that it was awfully hard to calm her down and get her to take a nap after a fit had already begun.
Brooke spent her first night in her crib on New Years Eve, and it went great. She sleeps great in her crib ... at night. I began trying to put her down for a morning nap in her crib and things did not go well. She screamed, she cried, she tossed, she turned. After as much as an hour of this she would fall asleep, only to wake 30-45 minutes later. From what we have read, that does not really constitute a nap. A nap should be between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 hours.
We realized that we needed to do a bit of work in the nap department, thus the "sleep training". There are a lot of methods and ideas out there, and I read all the books and did some internet searching. What I ended up with is combination of two philosphies / books: Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child and On Becoming Baby Wise.
Her sleep schedule is basically derived from her eating schedule, which is about every 3 hours. She eats right after she wakes up for a nap, plays for a bit, has some calming time, and then its back down for a nap! Right now she has three naps in her schedule, plus her nightime sleep. From what I can tell, in the next few months she will drop down to two naps, a morning nap and an afternoon nap.
The schedule makes perfect sense. We can plainly see that she needs to take a nap almost the exact time she is "scheduled" for one. The problem is that she doesnt want to take one - at least not in her crib. She is pretty content sleeping on my lap, or in her carseat, but the crib is a whole different story. That's what we are working on this week ;)
Sleep Training Week 1
So after a week of sleep training, do I have a "trained" baby? I'm afraid not. Napping is still a challenge and she won't go into her crib without crying (though nightime is amazing - she is sleeping 12 hours some nights). I don't know if its just my imagination, but since she has been getting MORE sleep, she appears to be MORE cranky. I think it should be the reverse :)
She seems to get tired after only 1 hour of wakefulness, and her crankiness when she is tired seems to be more extreme. In addition, I feel like my entire days involve her sleeping, or me trying to get her to sleep. It seems like we have less time for play and interaction.
Well, its only the first week and one week in many weeks to come. So far we are both struggling, but I'm going to talk to some friends and seek out some more resources and go from there!
