For the last few weeks, we’ve been putting our girls on a sleeping and eating schedule according to some simple rules. See my blog entry Scheduling the Girls. Their “nighttime” sleep is a twelve-hour period from approximately 7pm to 7am. During this time they should be only getting up to be quickly fed and burped, i.e. no playing. And instead of eating every four hours, like during the daytime, we just let them sleep for however long they can. Well, a few patterns have emerged. Eleanor gets hungry sooner than Miranda, and usually needs a bottle at midnight and 4 am. Miranda can sleep for seven hours straight from 7pm until 2 am, and after eating at 2 am, she gets up to start her day at 6 am. All this is pretty normal for three month old babies, but there’s a huge problem. There’s a feeding going on in the house at 12 am, 2 am, 4 am, and 6 am. Needless to say, Bernard and I are barely functional at work the next day.
Two days ago, we decided to try something new. Our new plan is to wake them up at 11 pm, feed both of them, and then expect them to sleep until 6am. The first night, we woke them up, gave them baths, fed them, and put them back to bed. The baths are necessary because otherwise, they aren’t awake enough to eat. Well, Miranda woke up again at 3 am, but after fifteen minutes of crying, she fell back asleep. Eleanor woke up at 5 am, and started crying. And kept crying. And crying. And eventually woke up Miranda, so they were both crying. Well, we wanted to be firm with the 6 am wake up time, so Bernard and I tried not to go soothe them at all, but after 45 minutes, we couldn’t take it anymore, so we went in. Both of them were sweaty and had a lot of snot from the crying that we had to suction out. But they were happy to see us and stopped crying immediately. And after cleaning them up and changing their diapers, it was 6 am and thank goodness, time to eat.
Yesterday, Miranda actually slept the rest of the night after the 11 pm feeding. Eleanor woke up at 4:15 am. Bernard re-swaddled her and let her fuss for a little bit, then she fell back asleep until 6 am. So, there’s some progress. I think we’re going to continue with this plan for the next 1-2 weeks. The main problem is that waking them up to feed according to our schedule just doesn’t seem right. And, it might prevent them from actually sleeping through the night. However, after many weeks of doing multiple post-midnight feedings, we had to do something. I think our next plan will be to let them sleep for as long as they can again, but wake up both of them when the first one wakes up. We’ll let you know how it goes.
i think stretching out 7h may be a bit long for 3mo old babies. their tummies are not that big yet to hold all the food necessary. and i tried formula and breastmilk and adding rice cereal… doesn’t make any difference. i think at their age, lucas was still feeding at 9PM (so we give him a bath 8:30 and start the bedtime ritual), 1AM and 5AM, which i didn’t think was too bad since by 5-6AM, we had to get up anyway. the 1AM feeding was the first to go. but it wasn’t until way later (like 9mo) that i skipped the 5AM feeding and stretched it out to 7-8AM (from 8-9PM). Don’t worry, they’ll get there. Since 1yo, lucas has been sleeping from 8PM to 7:30AM straight.
I think it is a myth that babies sleep through the night so early. I remember in my parent-baby class, at 8 mo old there were only 2 out of about 20 babies sleeping through the night without feeding. Thank God Penny was one of the 2!
btw, the 1AM feeding went away at 6mo (or more like I made it go away). I don’t know if you can try it at 4mo (like the book says) b/c I didn’t sleep train him until 6mo. So from 6mo-1yo, he slept from 9PM to 5AM which isn’t too bad. You can try the miracle blanket/pacifier like Bix did and her baby slept all night at 6wks.