Sleep

Sleep is a rare commodity for me these days. My sons are getting bigger and sleeping less. Actually, they are still sleeping quite a lot. Just not at the same time. When they were newborns, they slept all the time and consequently slept at the same time. My main concern was WAKING them for their nursing sessions. They were SO hard to keep awake for those early nursing sessions. Looking back at that time now, I’m shocked that we WOKE them to eat. My boys are champion eaters now and NEVER need to be woken for food.

As we approach their 4 month birthday I am starting to contemplate a new sleep plan. I had always thought that with a consistent bedtime and naptime routine that they would sleep and sleep at.the.same.time. However, this is not the case. I’ve read 4 different sleep strategy books at this point and I’m trying to piece together something that will work for Magnus, for Ragnar and for Mama & Papa. I’m in new territory here. As a former nanny and child care professional I have done my share of sleep training. The majority of my sleep training was done with toddlers, but I did have a hand in sleep training an infant as well. I’ve been trying to remember all of my “tricks” for nap training and hoping that it will apply for bedtime sleep as well.

There seem to be a couple of issues we are dealing with that I need to address and resolve.
1. Bedtime. From the day we came home from the hospital we have had a bedtime routine in place. We are consistent. Our routine is: bath, boob, book (read by Papa while they are nursing) then put in bed awake but drowsy. Many nights one or both boys will fall asleep at the boob and sleep through the story to be put in bed asleep. This is the problem- they are asleep and then about 30-45 minutes later awake and cry and cry and are hard to soothe back to sleep. Last night Ragnar was inconsolable. He was held/soothed/patted/rubbed/rocked by my husband for 2 hours. Hubby then went to bed and handed him off to me. I nursed/rocked/patted/held him for an additional hour and he finally fell asleep. This is after he had fallen asleep during the bedtime routine. Magnus generally is soothed back to sleep easily after he wakes up.
2. Night waking. Both Magnus and Ragnar are sleeping for longer stretches at night. At their 2 month appointment my pediatrician suggested that I stop waking them to eat at the same time at night. Generally this is great but, every once in a while it is a pain in the butt. Why? Because I will feed one that wakes to eat, get him burped and back to sleep and just be drifting off to sleep when the other baby will wake to eat. I repeat the feeding, burping, soothing and falling to sleep for me and then baby number 1 will wake to eat again. They do this tag-team approach and it results in very poor sleep for Mama.
3. Naps. In general Magnus is a morning napper and Ragnar is an afternoon napper. This results is Ragnar being cranky in the morning (from tiredness) and Magnus being cranky in the afternoon (from tiredness). Both of them are cranky in the early evening. My hunch is that it is because they are not getting enough sleep during the day. Also, I’ve been pretty inconsistent with napping them in their cribs. I generally let them sleep in their swing, bouncy seat or when I’m desperate in their carseats on a drive or walk. I would love for them both to take naps at the same time during the day in their room in their cribs, but this rarely happens.

After reading the latest sleep book that I’ve purchased I’ve come up with a plan of sorts. Magnus and Ragnar have very different temperaments and I will most likely need to modify the plan as we go along to fit each of them individually, but in general we’ll try to stick to a similar plan.
1. Bedtime. Routine will slightly be modified to boob, bath, book and then put in bed drowsy but awake. We will allow slight fussing/crying for no more than 5 minutes after being put in their respective co-sleeper and pack n play. (Still sleep in our room- planning to do this until at least 6 months old.) After 5 minutes we’ll return to the room and soothe/calm the child that is crying and leave again. Why 5 minutes? That’s about all the crying I can handle at this point. Plus, I hope that it will help them figure out how to fall asleep on their own.
2. Night waking. I believe that both Magnus and Ragnar are capable of going longer than 2 hours without being nursed. I KNOW they are capable of it. If it has been less than 3 hours since eating I plan on soothing them back to sleep without nursing them. If they are still fussy/crying and not calmed then I’ll nurse them. But, I won’t automatically assume that they need food each time they wake at night.
3. Naps. I think our problem is that I’m keeping them awake too long during the day. I’ll keep a better eye on the clock and on Magnus & Ragnar to see when they are showing tired signals. I’ll try to keep them to napping every 2 hours or so for now. I will put both of them down for naps IN THEIR CRIBS each naptime. I will employ the 5 minute cry method and then soothe them. If one falls asleep and the other does not then I’ll keep trying to soothe and get that child to sleep, but if after 1 hour the child isn’t asleep I’ll get him up and play with him until he shows tired signals.

I am also currently keeping a sleep log for Magnus and Ragnar. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to see times when I can stretch their awake or sleep times to get them on the same schedule during the day. I also want to know how much sleep they are actually getting and then adjust bedtimes and naptimes accordingly. Will my plan work? Who knows… but I’ll give it my best shot.