All I Can Say is Ah!

Monday, January 4th, 2010 - Day 17

I'll admit, the past two weeks have been a definite change of pace for our schedules, especially the lack of sleep. We got off to a rough start because of a few things, in my opinion, that made it hard for us to get on a routine off the bat. The first was the jaundice and having Tia sleeping 24-7, except for feeding, in the billy bed for 4 days when we got home from the hospital. Since it was the week of Christmas, we invited anyone who wanted to come by our house for Christmas to stop by since we didn't go anywhere. Because of this, Tia was super spoiled and was held by several family members pretty much every day for several days after she was out of the billy-bed. Of course, this was very special and I loved that she was being held by everyone, but she would fall asleep in their arms and hence becoming accustomed to being held in order to fall asleep. The other big thing was her having her days and nights switched - sleeping all day and up all night.

We resolved the days and nights very quickly, to our amazement. She was back on track this entire week and it was really nice to know we'd get a few hours of sleep at a time during the night. As mentioned in an earlier post, I wanted Tia to become a BabyWise baby and to follow the principles in the book that was recommended to me. I believe in all that the say, but of course getting her on track due to the three things listed above was turning out to be harder than expected. They encourage an every 3 hour feeding schedule which we implemented from day 1. They also encourage you to have wake time for baby after feeding and then a naptime. We had certainly gotten her on the feeding and then waketime portion, but were a little off on the naptime. She would be in my arms and fall asleep into naptime but the book says you need to put the baby down while she is awake so she can get used to being dependent in naps/sleeptime. This was going to be a hard task, but I know the earlier we start this, the better.

So today, I decided to start putting this routine into motion. I have to admit, it went pretty smooth today and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it goes smooth the rest of the night and the rest of the week. I'm doing the 3 hour feeding times and once she is done feeding, I play with her for a good half an hour, change her diaper, then play with her for another half an hour. At that point, I start to rock her or hold her like I would normally when she was falling asleep, BUT instead of waiting until she was out, I would put her in her crib before she was asleep to see if she would fall asleep on her own. To my surprise, she has! Of course, sometimes she needs me to be near, but she still went to sleep on her own without being held which is huge. I have the sound of the ocean on in her room, have her swaddled tightly and she does have a pacifier - all things that have helped! I want to continue this routine the rest of the week and then starting next week, put her down for a nap before she starts getting tired. I know that it is some work on my part and patience, but eventually she will know the routine and when she gets put in her crib, she'll know it is naptime.

So I am excited about today's developments because the past several days, she's had a few hours of fussiness about the same time every day. Today - no fussiness at all. No, the day is not over yet, BUT I'm pretty confident she won't bring out Miss Fussy today. I'll keep you posted - but say a little prayer that we will be settling into this new routine for good!