Our Babies Sleep Great!!!
Feb 05 '00
... only they wake up a few times a night to nurse :-)
We have five kids so lots of experiences in the sleeping through the night issue. One thing I have mostly learned is that every kid is different. And if you are blessed with a kid who easily sleeps through the night, enjoy, but if your kid doesn't, don't despair, it is normal and not something to worry about. Because what I have learned too, is that you can put a kid to bed, but you can't make her sleep. Try to make the environment as conductive to sleeping as possible, but even if you do everything right, the kid still might not sleep!
What I have found much more productive than trying to get the kids sleep through the night, is trying to make sure that everybody gets as much sleep as possible and is disturbed the least amount possible by night wakings. For our family, that means the family bed. It enables me to get all my needed sleep, even if baby wakes up, because the only thing I need to do is plug in and roll over again when baby is done. I barely wake up, usually in the morning I can't even remember how many times the baby woke up and nursed.
For other families a family bed might not work, but I have had friends put an extra mattress in a kids room and have mom sleep there with baby, so that everybody got more sleep and was more rested.
What we have always refused to do is letting the baby cry it out. Somehow it never made sense to me not to be there for my kid, if he clearly needed me at night. I felt that it would be a violation of the trust he had in me, if I did not reply to cries when needed. I think night wakings are totally normal, appropriate and to be expected when you have a baby, and it is just something that is part of parenthood. It is just an issue of finding a way to handle it best which works for your family and is respectful towards the baby.
Now my personal experiences with my different kids.
Number one family bedded from the day he came home from the hospital and woke up frequently at night, due to asthma problems and he also had to nurse very frequently because of weight problems. This was not a big issue, since after a while I figured out how to nurse lying down and then it didn't really disturb me any more. When he was 14mo, he started sleeping through the night after some gentle encouragement, but still slept with us in our family bed until he was almost 5yo.
Number two was the one who woke up the longest time. He didn't sleep through the night until he was 4yo. But, again, because of the family bed, I didn't really care. From the time he was about 2yo, he would start the night in his own bed, then come over to us when he woke up, nurse and sleep the rest of the night in our bed. This worked for us, because we didn't have to get out of bed to tend to a crying toddler, he just did the work of coming over himself.
I can't even remember when number three started to sleep through the night, but I do remember that she was the one who moved out of our bed when she was about 2.5yo, insisting on having her own bed, but also insisting on having mommy there to nurse if she needed to at night LOL. So I did musical beds for a while, going to her when she needed me, going back to the parental bed when the toddler in there needed me.
Number four slept regularly through the night before she was a year old, although she still has occasional periods of night wakings. She sleeps together with her sister, and if she wakes up at night, she usually just comes over to our bed, snuggles up with us and sleeps on.
Number five is only 10 months old at the moment, still in our family bed and still waking up at night. I am sure some day she will sleep through the night, for now I am happy in meeting her needs at night for as long as she needs it.
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Epinions.com ID:
nursing3
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Member: Karen Plomp
Location: New Hampshire
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 39 members
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