Dr. Weissbluth

Have you heard of Dr. Weissbluth? You probably have to some degree if you are a parent, or expecting. He is the doctor of the strict sleep schedule. I am sure we have all heard of the two theories, "parenting on demand" or giving your child a schedule for day and nighttime.
I can't say I know a ton about either. I do know that "parenting on demand" doesn't involve much of a schedule, your baby sleeps at various times, and eats whenever needed. Scheduling your baby means that you plan when they eat and when they sleep and you stick to it religiously.
Lots of parents seem to do something in the middle of those two options.

I was never a fan of planning when Wrennie should eat. I felt like if she wanted to eat multiple times in a short time span, then she could. She was a newborn and needed to feed. She also slept everywhere. That is normal.
But once she reached 3 months old, she needed to have naps....and I didn't have a clue. It took me a good month to figure that one out. She would have these meltdowns that I didn't understand. I thought, why doesn't she just fall asleep easily like she used to?
Eventually I figured out that I had to help her nap. I had to watch for when she got tired and put her down in her crib to sleep at least twice or three times a day to sleep. (Don't get me wrong, she also napped in the car or stroller as needed when the crib wasn't an option).

We also realized as she got older that she needed a regular bedtime. If I let her sleep too late (say past 5:30pm), she wouldn't go to bed until some ungodly hour. We had bedtime happening around 8:30pm.

So eventually she was worked into a loose routine. Wake up around 7am. Nap at 10am. Another nap at 3pm. Bedtime at 8pm. Sometimes naps were so hard to make happen, and I wanted to pull my hair out if she wasn't going down. So I would throw her in the stroller, or the car, anything to get her to sleep.
But this has been her routine to date. I try to be home for her naps because now she is over 8 months old and just doesn't fall asleep nearly as easy as she used to. She also doesn't just sleep anywhere like she used to, and needs a quiet, dark space to make it happen.

All that being said, I JUST started reading Dr. Weissbluth's book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.
Why? She is in a good routine isn't she? Sort of. She is still waking up once a night at 4am and takes at least an hour to get back down again..needless to say, it sort of eats into the morning and Kenton has to get up for work at 6am. It's annoying.

I was perusing a mom blog site, and they had a small post about baby nighttime sleeping. They talked about this woman who runs a website devoted to helping parents and babies fix sleeping problems called The Baby Sleep Site. As I read through the site, I wasn't sure I wanted to pay for her services since my problem wasn't that desperate yet. But I was interested in some reading she recommended. Her top book is Dr. Weissbluth's, so I decided to check it out.

I am about halfway through, trying to read it in spare moments. Here is what I think of it so far...

It is interesting, helpful and insightful. He also seems to repeat himself endlessly and contradict himself on many occasions. However, he talks about how children need a sleep structure, because they are not born with, nor do they develop the ability to just sleep well all the time. He argues that babies need good quality naps. They need a quiet space to sleep, and need to sleep for more than 30 minutes to be considered a good nap. Anything less and they didn't sleep deeply enough and will still be tired.
I have definitely found that to be true for Wrennie. A good nap for her has to be at least 45 min.

He also says that babies need to be put down for naps before the meltdown happens, otherwise you will have a big battle on your hands. Yes, I have experienced that for sure.

He talks about different ways to soothe your baby, what to do with colic, different baby temperaments, letting them cry to sleep or not, if your baby is breastfed or bottle fed, co-sleeping vs crib and bedtimes.

Wrennie is a good sleeper for the most part, but we wanted to know why she was still waking up for a feed at 4am when she probably didn't need it. According to Dr. Weissbluth, babies need to go to bed early. Not 8pm "early", but 6:30pm/7pm early! He says that lots of parents don't like that because it interferes with parent and child playtime, parents get home form work too late, or parents think their child will wake up super early in the morning as a result. But he says, if you put them to bed early, they will sleep right through the night without waking AND not wake up any earlier. Kenton and I were surprised to hear that.
We decided to try it. Wrennie had an earlier nap in the late afternoon (woke up around 3pm) and for bedtime we put her down at 7pm. She slept through the night all the way to 6am. We were shocked.
I will give a disclaimer though...last night we were out at a friends for dinner and came home at 7. We didn't get her to sleep until 8 and then she woke up in the night and stayed away from 3-5am. So we kind of threw it off a bit, but we will try again in the days to follow without interruption and see how it goes, and let you know!

The book is a bit extreme with his suggestions, but I guess if you are severely sleep deprived or want to figure out what you should to do help your child sleep and nap better, you may need that. It does give great insight to how children sleep and provides different options depending on your baby's temperament and age.

Like I said, I am not done it yet, and we still have yet to see if her earlier bedtime will work for getting her to sleep through the night.

I will keep you posted...and if you don't have kids, don't care, or yours sleep through the night, it's your own fault you read this whole boring post!