More Sleep

So, after the newborn stage...it got easy...then way more tricky.  At first it was fine. Leroy started waking up only once a night by the time he was 2 months old (he would sleep from 7-about 2 or 3, then sleep until 7 or 8) which was GREAT after getting up multiple times a night for a couple months (I know, quit whining, right? I agree). I swear the difference between getting up twice a night and only once a night to feed him was life-changing and awesome. I was definitely continuing the process of keeping the lights out and no talking or eye contact with Leroy at night, and he was amazingly pretty much going right back to sleep after he was done with his bottle all the time. We were still swaddling at this point (yay swaddle!). For a minute around 3 months I think I decided I wanted to transition him out of the swaddle, but it seemed like he wasn't sleeping the long stretches he was before, so I went back to it was was loving it again. I think I finally stopped at about 4 1/2 months when he was really just too strong for the velcro swaddle blankets and he would pop out of it right away.

I will say that for a little while we were using his baby swing a LOT. When he was first born he slept in it all the time. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but I was really sick when I went into labor (horrendous, phlegm producing coughing, super stuffy nose, no energy, etc.), so, there was not really any way to avoid Leroy getting the same awful sickness on...oh, day 2 of life. So even though it seemed like we were constantly trying to clear his nose out, it was still super clogged. It seemed like sleeping on an incline in the swing helped a lot, so that's where he slept. I did get him out of his swing and into a bassinet (it had a little vibrate button you could press on it so that he would still get some movement to soothe him to sleep initially) after the worst of the sickness was over at night...but naps stayed in the swing. In retrospect, maybe I should have transitioned him to napping in the bassinet, then the crib at the same time, but I didn't. Oops. Sleep crutch. More on that later.

During the day I really wanted to get on a by-the-clock schedule. I paid attention to when he seemed to get sleepy during the day for about a week and then started trying to steer him toward napping at the same times everyday until nap time was really nap time. He would wake up around 7 or 8, then his first nap was at 9:30 or 10 when I would put him in the BOB stroller we have and go for a walk/jog (since I was also feeling really gross about the size I still was, which rationally I know was totally normal, blah, blah blah), then nap number two was at 1. and this was very reliable at this time. Sometimes his first nap would be really long (i.e. 2-2 1/2 hours), but he would still want his 1 o'clock nap. Then he would nap again I think at 3:30 or 4 and this last one was in his vibrating bouncy chair and was a little more difficult. If I'm remembering right I think we would usually have to bounce him while letting him suck on one of our fingers. But, he was napping. And even now, as long as Leroy gets his sleep, he is a happy baby.

Sleep Time

Leroy has always been a good sleeper and has been sleeping through the night for a couple months now. So, a friend of mine asked what the heck did I do to get this? Well, I know at least part (probably most) of it is that Leroy likes sleep. When we first brought him home from the hospital, it seemed like that was really all he wanted to do--to the detriment of his (then) scrawny little self. Leroy was 7 lbs 5 oz when he was born, and dropped down to 6 lbs 10 oz by day 4 because he just didn't even want to wake up to eat. This has definitely changed since then because now he is a whopping 21 lbs at a little over 7 months old.

So, unfortunately for those reading this and trying to get their babies to sleep, Leroy does just like to sleep, but those who know me know that I can go a little crazy and I definitely read about 8 million articles about baby sleep because as hard as being a parent is, i think it would be about 38 times harder without sleep.

So after the longest ever intro, here is what I can remember of what I did to get a good sleeper:

-Even in the beginning I read that babies need to learn the difference between night and day. During the day when Leroy would sleep we had him sleep in his bouncy chair in the living room with us, with the lights on and usually the tv/music/etc too and when I wanted to show him that it was night time, the lights came down and everything got quieter in the house. This is clearly easier to do with only one baby in the house, but I'm hoping it won't be too hard with two. After a couple months of this it was obvious that he had learned the difference between day and night and he started napping in his room that was dimmed during the day.

-at bedtime (which to be honest I can't remember how we settled on at first, I think it was just whenever he started getting sleepy around 7...also bedtime has changed a couple of times now...more on that in a bit) instead of doing a normal feeding out in the living room, Leroy got a diaper change, changed into his pjs, and got his bottle in his very quiet and mostly dark room with no eye contact (apparently when they are very young and can't do very much, even just eye contact perks them up). Then he got swaddled and put down. This was in our room for a little while, but I had to move him into his own room pretty quickly because he was a very noisy sleeper and I was constantly waking up to look at him because of a grunt, etc and most of the time he was still sleeping.

-the swaddling also helped a lot. We would swaddle him up super tight so he wouldn't whack himself in the head and wake himself up for no reason. At first we just used regular blankets, then he got too strong for those so we moved to the blankets with the Velcro on them...at some point we also wrapped an ace bandage around him on top of the swaddle, but that was definitely the most annoying to put on & take off of him when it was time for a diaper change/feeding.

-at night feedings, this should all stay the same. I got a dimmer switch for the light in the baby room and would turn it on to the minimum amount of light I could change a diaper with, then get him positioned with his bottle and turn off the light completely while he ate. For a while we couldn't figure out why Leroy would go right back to sleep (usually) when I fed him but would be up for a while when Jason would take a shift. Turns out, Jason was watching tv while leroy ate and the light/sounds woke him up to much and he just couldn't settle back down right away.

I think this is all I can remember for that first newborn stage, but I'll write some more about the later months too...