Sleep Training

A 3.5 hour stretch of sleep last night, and I am a new person.

We approached sleeping with no preconceived notions, not rejecting anything along the spectrum of Dr. Sears (co-sleep) to Dr. Ferber (cry it out) outright. During our four days in the hospital after Luca was born, he slept with either Ben or me, because the plastic bassinet on wheels seemed so antiseptic and far from our beds.

At home we already had an Arm's Reach co-sleeper attached like a sidecar to our bed (thanks, ladies from my shower!). The first night, Luca spent about 5 minutes in the co-sleeper - too far away for us to hear him breathing so both of us were craning our heads over to the co-sleeper. So into bed Luca came.

It felt so nice - this sweet baby breathing and moving right next to me. Fearful of crushing Luca in our sleep (really my sleep, since I was still on vidocin due to my c-section), we got an in-bed co-sleeper: The First Years Close & Secure Sleeper. This is really a glorified little box, with 4-inch high plastic sides so you can't roll over on the baby. The sleeper took up a third of our queen bed - Ben complained that his elbow wasn't in the bed - but it was so nice for both of us to be right next to Luca at night.

And, thanks to the advice of our doula, we got separate non-down blankets to minimize risk of suffocating baby.

All great. Sleep started out promising with two hour stretches, and sometimes a 2.5 or 3 hour span in a night. But then Luca started waking up more often, and often wanting to eat more. And he did not want to stay in his glorified box. So I started comfort nursing, and/or one of us would sleep with him on our chest or in our arm. I think the comfort nursing encouraged him to wake up even more often for a snack. The last couple weeks he's had several hour stints of waking up every 30-60 minutes to eat. And, at some point we jettisoned the in-bed co-sleeper, though in its defense I think it was because we thought we would somehow get Luca into the Arm's Reach sidecar co-sleeper.

Even though I used to survive quite well on 4 hours of sleep, honed on startup hours and mid-week bar outings, I am sadly out of practice now. A few times I lost it and wimpered to Ben in exasperation to take crying Luca away upstairs.

So last night, we decided to start sleep training last night. I found this posting on preventing sleep problems from a Dr. David Olson to be very helpful:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Pediatrics-1429/6-week-old-sleep.htm, and just found a similar but more general description here: http://www.babycenter.com/404_how-do-i-teach-my-baby-to-soothe-himself-to-sleep_1272921.bc

The big ah ha was putting Luca down when he was drowsy but awake versus asleep and then hoping he would not wake up. The other thing was a nighttime routine. My friend, Monica, had told me she implemented this for her daughter who is 6 weeks older than Luca. Ben and I are not routine people, so we were a bit loath to do it at this young age, but I was so sleep deprived desperate yesterday that we decided on a routine over dinner.

Plan hatched, we started at 9:30 pm: bath and "story" with Mrs. Mustard's faces book - thank you, Bart - so appropriate because Luca was crying/pouting. Then breastfeeding, swaddling, and in the sidecar at 10:15 pm. Luca cried a little, and I picked him up and comforted him and put him back into the sidecar. He was asleep in 10 minutes! I could not believe it.

Luca slept until 1:45 am - 3.5 hours! Then he woke up hungry, so another breastfeeding session then back into the sidecar at 2:30 am. This was the hard part, and I appreciate that Ben told me at dinner this sleep training plan would fail at first and we'd have to persevere. Luca kept waking up and crying every 5-20 minutes. I would either pick him up, rub his tummy or jiggle him and talk to him. And the giraffe noise machine was on full throttle - thanks, Naureen. Finally, he went into a deep sleep at 4 am. Frankly, I was able to keep calmly soothing him for an hour and a half because I had gotten 3.5 hours sleep earlier in the night!

Luca woke up again at 6:30 am, we had another feeding, and now he is still sleeping soundly in his sidecar as I sit in bed writing this post.

Hope this works again - maybe even better? - tonight...

Now I'm not sure what to do for naps during the day. We had been using a sling (New Native Carrier) which I love because it's easy to get on quickly, and he's with me all the time. Dr. Sears is a big advocate of slings. But it seems like the womb-like sling isn't preparing Luca for the sidecar at night. I tried priming him with a carseat nap yesterday afternoon, which he initially didn't like but fell asleep after a couple strolls around the house with carseat on the Snap N Go.

Anyone have any advice for daytime naps?