NZ Baby Blog

Long time no posts, I’ll get caught up sooner (or more probably later) but right now I’m back trying to click my boy to sleep (now nearly 18 months so more of a toddler than a baby).

The problem: Not going back to sleep quickly in the night without being patted/holding your hand.

My goal is for my boy to go to sleep by himself in his cot, without having him cry himself to sleep. He was doing it quite well, but has drifted off again due to a mixture of teathing problems and sickness etc. At the moment it’s taking up to 1.5hrs for him to get back to sleep, which is pretty hard on the parents at 3am.

Yesterday we got started.

The behaviour I want to reinforce

is quietly lieing in his cot - not standing up at his cot, and not crying, even when I leave the room.

The reward

is what he likes, which is being patted or cuddling my hand.

The method I’ve employed is similar to teaching a dog to stay

• Get him lieing in cot not crying first by usual method of cuddling/patting etc.

• When he’s been calm for a minute or so, withdraw the hand for 5 seconds, if he’s still & happy, then pat as a reward for about 10 times (so more patting than not patting initially).
• Then withdraw hand for 10 seconds, then pat for 10 times
• Then withdraw hand for 20 seconds - then reward
• Repeat building up to 1 minute
• Then 2 minutes

When I got to 2 minutes with me by the cot, I decided to go for distance as well.

As any dog trainer knows, if you change one variable, you need to compensate with the others.

• So it was 10 seconds with me 1 foot away, then back to patting
• 30 seconds with me 1 foot away then reward
• 1 minute 1 foot away then reward

Then

• 10 seconds with me over by the door
• 30 seconds by the door
• 1 minute by the door

10 seconds out of sight completely in the hallway - that was tricky, he got back up again so I went back to by the door for a longer time, then tried just a literal walk out the door and back in, got it.

Out of sight for 20 seconds but quiet (ie just out side the door)

Then the next biggie, me walking down the hallway (Squeaky floorboards don’t help my cause)

YAY managed that too (which is about 30 seconds), but he stayed horizontal.

So I’m up to about a minute out of sight, and he’s asleep, so end of practice for today.

This took about an hour, total awake time including potty and feed 1.5 hrs, so the same as if I hadn’t done it, but at least I felt I’d made better use of the time, and we didn’t wake up the whole house.

Sleeping was going really well for a few months, we had done a bit of toughing it out in the middle of the night after he’d started waking up and staying awake at 2am for a few days - this was at about 9 or 10 months.

1st night - did nothing asleep after 1 1/2 hrs
2nd night - cuddles etc for 1 1/2 hour, crying for 1/2 hr, sleep after 2 hrs total
3rd night - small cuddles, crying for 1/2 hr, sleep after 1 hr
3rd night - no cuddles, crying for 15 mins or so, sleep after 1/2 hr
4th night - no wakeup!

At the same time I instituted: Farex & Formula cereal before bed, milk before a bath, and a later bedtime. He was going about 10 hours, but now more like 9.

And now at a year the dreaded hungry wakeup is upon us again. It’s got a bit hotter, and he’s eating a bit less well during the day, and doing a heep more, walking and running everywhere, and thus waking up after 6 hours or so hungry. At the moment I’m feeding him but I’m thinking of ways to increase his food during the day so that he’s not hungry at night. So far I’m not getting far with it and my brain is a weeny bit fried.

Actually the plan worked for getting him to go to sleep by himself. I spent a few weeks diligently putting him in his cot, taking him out before he got upset, gradually increasing the time int he cot until he could be there for 15-20 mins quite happily. Then one night I left him to it and went and brushed my teath, came back, and he was asleep, yay!

Then of course I didn’t keep it up for a bunch of not very good reasons, so we’re back feeding to sleep at the moment because it’s quick and easy and reliable.

I’ve been thinking though that I might make the effort again to get him to go to sleep in his bed a bit more. Interestingly now he’s in his own room, he gets more soothing to sleep than he did in the room with me, because I want to make sure he’s well and truly asleep so I don’t have to get up again.

My babe has been generally not a bad sleeper - not a fantastic sleeper, but not dreadful. That was until he turned 7 months, and into the sleeper from hell.

For starters I got a head cold, so wasn’t sleeping that well myself, and then he got the cold so wasn’t that chipper either. So we had a 2 week feeling rubbish lead in when the sleep deteriorated. Then for about a week, he was waking up every 2 ish hours and I was definitely hearing about it.

For the first time ever I was getting to 6am with a dry nappy, because he’d wake up screaming, and then I’d put him on the potty, he’d do a big pee, and after a cuddle go back to sleep. While having a dry nappy is nice it was seriously doing my head in being woken up every 3 hours again.

I even started reading various sleep related webpages, about how to do controlled crying etc to get them to go to sleep. What was really gutting was that he’d been quite good about putting himself back to sleep in the night and this was such a giant leap backwards.

He still has a bit of a snotty nose, so I decided to tough it out until that was better, and have been planning how to do the essence of controlled crying, preferably without the actual crying. I did notice that most of the crying technique things say you should get them better within 1-2 weeks.

Maybe reading the webpages was enough, because he’s a lot better now - back to sleeping 8 hours, waking for a quick feed, and then back to sleep for another 3-4 hours.

What did I do to achieve this? Pretty much nothing. I thought it was suspicious that various people I talked to said that their baby wasn’t sleeping so well at around the same age. So did think that perhaps it would just pass - sadly like sleeping 10 hrs straight a night just passed as well. I did put him into bed one night awake and do the controlled crying, without the crying - so more controlled grumbling while I did my teeth, and then comforted him & fed him when he cried.

I also started having cheese and crackers again for afternoon tea - I’ve noticed a definite correlation between my protein and fat intake and his sleeping over the months (more on that later).

So my lesson for next time I’m panicking about sleep is to first think about how long the changed behavior has been going for (a week isn’t a permanent change), to give it a bit longer before doing anything radical, and to make sure I’m eating enough at the right time of day so that the milk is good and sleep making!

‘m a bit gutted that B no longer seems keen on going to sleep by himself. He was doing this really well - I started early, so from a few days or maybe weeks I forget, I would give him the opportunity to put himself to sleep without me cuddling or feeding him.

He still will put himself to sleep in the middle of the night - so if I give him a feed and he’s still awake at the end he’ll generally go back to sleep quite happily. However I haven’t managed to get it right during the day for quite a while.

One of the problems of course is that the only routines I manage are ones around food. I get myself all psyched up to feed him a bit early and then make sure he’s a bit awake when I put him to bed and he goes off to sleep anyway.

However I figure that during the day I’ll just not worry about it for now, but that in the evening I’ll make a concerted effort to give him “self sleep opportunities”.