Friday, March 11, 2011

Sleep Solution Step Two

Firstly, I went over the co-sleeping safety check, and decided that it's not really the best idea for us to co-sleep right now, even part time. We're always good about making sure there are no blankets or pillows near where Ty is, but he's always laying tummy-to-tummy with me, my arm around him and between Doug and I. The book explains the safety precautions necessary in co-sleeping, and says that the baby should be between the wall and his mom, and if there is no wall, there should be a mesh safety rail. If we were co-sleeping full time, I would just sidecar the crib against the bed, but we only co-sleep part time (a couple hours a night, maybe 3-5 times a week). I'll likely pick up a mesh safety rail to keep on my side of the bed so that we are able to safely co-sleep (as I really do like those few hours of snuggles, and I would want Ty to be safe whenever he wants/needs to sleep with us).

So last night Ty did not sleep with us, and I only brought him into our bed for feeding and for a half hour of pre-wake up snuggles. There were no issues with him not sleeping with us last night.

Anyway, on to Step Two: Learn Basic Sleep Facts. This step is really helpful in learning why babies sleep the way they do. I think any changes taking place right now are in my mentality and the way I view Ty's sleeping habits. He is not a "problem sleeper", and we're not doing Sleep Solution to make him a better sleeper, but to make us better at understanding his basic sleep needs. Maybe we'll find some improvements along the way, but improving his sleep is not my ultimate goal here.

One thing I found interesting was the sleep cycle patterns of a typical baby. It looks something like this (over an 11-12 hour period):
Drowsy; falling asleep
light sleep
deep sleep (for about an hour)
brief awakening
deep sleep (for 1-2 hours)
light sleep
brief awakening
REM/dreaming sleep
brief awakening
light sleep
brief awakening
REM sleep
brief awakening
Toward morning: deep sleep
brief awakening
REM sleep
brief awakening
light sleep
awake for the day

Seeing how frequently babies fall in and out of light or deep sleep and have brief awakenings, it's no wonder we have such frequent wake ups. Adults also have similar sleep patterns, but we are able to fall back to sleep without fully waking up or registering our awakenings. When we adjust pillows, change positions or any of the other numerous things we do at night, we barely even realize we are awake. Babies who wake frequently but are not hungry, generally just don't know HOW to fall back asleep. We put Ty to sleep on a bottle or soother, in our arms. So when he wakes up, he feels he needs the same routine in order to fall asleep again. To put it into an adult context, that would be like us waking up in a different room with no pillow. We couldn't just fall back to sleep on the kitchen floor with no pillow, we'd need to go back to our bed and go back to sleep the way we FIRST fell asleep.

It makes sense, now, that a baby who fell asleep in my arms with a soother (or bottle) in his mouth, would struggle to fall asleep on his own all alone. So he cries out to me to help him fall back to sleep. Generally he's pretty easy, and I can get up and pat him on the back and he'll fall asleep again, but hopefully this book will help us figure out how to give Ty the tools he needs to fall asleep on his own. He's not terrible at it now, and we've introduced his lovey, which he grabs on to and sucks on and can fall asleep that way most times.

Another interesting thing I learned was about how much sleep babies actually need (as always, this is about typical babies... like Ty. There are those babies who don't fall into any sort of category). Since Ty is 3 1/2 months, he is right on the verge of hitting a change in sleep (babies' sleep matures a lot from newborn to young child ages, and 4 months is one of those times. This is what people call the "sleep regression", but it's really just a baby's sleep maturing and them sorting out how to deal with it. Since Ty is so close to this new sleep stage, I'm reading both the "newborn" and the "4 months +" sections of this book.

A typical 3 month old baby needs 3 naps (totaling 5-6 hours) and 10-11 hours of nighttime sleep for a total of about 15 hours of sleep in a day.

A typical 6 month old baby needs 2 naps (totaling 3-4 hours) and 10-11 hours of nighttime sleep for a total of 14-15 hours of sleep a day.

For reference (since I'm far from this stage, but I'm sure others who are reading this may be parents to older babies), a 12 month old needs 1-2 naps (totaling 2-3 hours) and 11 1/2-12 hours of nighttime sleep for a total of 14 hours of sleep in a day.

A 3 year old needs 1 nap (totaling 1-1 1/2 hours) and 11 hours of nighttime sleep for a total of 12 hours of sleep in a day.

Since a newborn sleeps 16-18 hours a day distributed over 6-7 sleep periods, and a 1 month old needs 3 naps, totaling 6-7 hours plus 8 1/2-10 hours of nighttime sleep, you can see how much a baby's sleep matures over the course of a year.

Anyway, these are the most interesting sleep facts I discovered. There is a LOT to learn about sleep, though! It definitely opened my eyes to the needs of my baby.

Today we are doing Step Three: Create Your Sleep Log. I'll post all about this tomorrow, and we'll see what's next! I'm excited to learn more about how to assist my baby in getting what he needs out of sleep.

2 comments:

  1. This sounds like a really interesting book. I have been very fortunate to have good sleepers but we've definitely gone through periods of not wanting to sleep or having sleep issues. Ellie has always been a one nap girl even when she was littler but that's seemed to work out okay. I think even as kids get older they can still use a nap/rest time to recharge a little.

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  2. Very interesting facts. I think we all had problems with babies not wanting to sleep.

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