I'm feeling much more refreshed this morning than I have in a long time, well 5 weeks to be exact. I actually got some real decent sleep. Hunter is a good sleeper, but he's been feeding around the clock without any sort of real schedule. I was warned not to put him on a schedule because he needed to gain some weight. Now that he is above average in weight and 5 weeks old, I decided to start a sleep routine.
We started the routine with his last evening feeding, it was 9:00pm last night and I'm going to try to move it to before 8:30 tonight. Then he got a warm bath which he settled into easily without any fuss, he's usually pretty good but yelps a bit at the onset. He then got a baby massage with some Burt's Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk Lotion, I adore the light scent, and I think Hunter did too. And then it was story time.
Story time was my favorite part because it actually gave me some time to read, and added to my relaxation. I just read my book (The Art of Racing in the Rain) in a soothing voice, and about 3 minutes into the reading both Adam and the dogs joined us, sprawled on Hunter's nursery floor. By 10pm Hunter's eyes began to droop so I swaddled him super tight and put him in his crib and he got himself to sleep by 10:15pm.
The best part was he didn't wake up until 1:45am and he did a really quick feeding (quick by my standards of breasts, bottles, pump) and was back to sleep by 2:15am. And he stayed asleep until 5:30am this morning where he had another quick feeding and was back to sleep at 5:45am. He's just stirring now at 7am.
I know it's not a normal schedule just yet, because sleeping through the night is defined as sleeping from 12am-5am, but it feels normal in the sense that Hunter mostly slept from 10pm to 7am. And I got over 6 hours of sleep!!! Woot woot!!!
I know that I'm writing this too soon and that he's going to be up all night tonight, crying, screaming, with some vomit and projectile poo thrown in. But I feel like we're, at least, on the right track.
He's going to be a great sleeper! I just know it!
ReplyDeletesounds like you're doing great! He's such a cute little guy!!
ReplyDeleteThanks guys, I'm sure he'll sleep well, eventually.
ReplyDeletelauren, we're a week ahead of you, and what you've got going is about where we are, too. last feeding sometime around 9, down for the count by 10, up (on a good night) between 2 and 3, and again by 6. rather than trying to move bedtime earlier, i'm trying to move wake-up time later, but the best i can do is get him to take a little nap between 7:30 and 9am.
ReplyDeleteour pediatrician told us that up twice is usually the best we can hope for until after 4 months...but he counts 6am as "the morning," so according to him, we're on a one-feeding night and should consider ourselves lucky...