Some of you know that Abigail hasn’t been the best sleeper since we brought her home. In fact, I’d say that her most active and awake hours have been between ten o’clock PM and six o’clock AM. She essentially has her day and night mixed up (which, by the way, from what I’ve read, is not an uncommon situation for many newborns and they can auto-correct themselves given time). Well, Kirsten and I started taking shifts to be up with her. Kirsten would stay up with her to calm her between ten and two. I’d stay up with her from two until six. Usually around six o’clock, she’d go back to sleep finally so we could both catch another hour or two of sleep until she needed to eat again.
Then we hit a rough patch where she wouldn’t even sleep at all over the course of those night hours. She was constantly fussy and irritable. She wouldn’t eat well, going for just a few minutes and then refusing to continue. Those couple of mornings Kirsten and I were like zombies.
Then we decided to try getting the “Happiest Baby on the Block” DVD from the public library and watch it. We had purchased the book a few weeks ago, but hadn’t had time to read it. Hopefully the DVD could give us an abridged version of the most important information, we hoped. We watched it Monday night this week and started applying some of the concepts that evening. To our complete surprise, they worked!
While Abigail is not sleeping through the night or anything, she does sleep for up to three hours at a stretch now, and goes right back to sleep after feeding. She even has better, longer feedings. Kirsten and I now wake up feeling much more rested. What did we do specifically?
- We swaddled her more tightly. We’d been swaddling her already, but loosely, to the point where she could get her arms free very easily. A tighter swaddle ensured she couldn’t get her arms loose and wake herself up by accident.
- Brought a radio into the bedroom to play static as a white background noise. It works, it calms her very quickly.
- Introduced a pacifier. She’s nursing very well now and despite that, we were nervous to do this. We decided to make the jump and she’s taken to it quite well and hasn’t experienced any “confusion” when trying to nurse.
- To soothe her after eating and a good hardy burp, I will take her from Kirsten and put her on her side in my arms and gently rock her that way. It works much better than keeping her on her back in my arms.
By their powers combined, the above steps have helped us, seemingly, get Abigail on the “right track” for a better sleeping pattern. I’m not saying she won’t regress some nights, but for the time being at least, Kirsten and I have gotten two nights in a row with around six hours of sleep, and that is something that we can both be very happy about!