By three months old we were in deep with Copelynn and her sleep, or lack there of. She seriously slept great until about 3ish months. She was sleeping 8-10 hours at night without eating. She would nap during the day, although not on a schedule, she'd still get good sleep. Then things changed around 3ish months. I had nursed her to sleep since the day she was born---she'd never gone to sleep any other way. Bad habit #1. And all of the sudden she was napping only in my arms, if at all, for maybe 20-30 minutes. She had no bed time, no wake up time, no routines, no schedule. I'm not about imposing your idea of a perfect schedule on your children, BUT there has to be some sort of order for the happiness of everyone in the house, that's for sure.
So, in the depths of our despair, we finally decided to move forward with help from a professional sleep consultant. It was THAT bad. I was TIRED beyond belief--physically and emotionally. I was miserable because Copelynn wasn't napping AT ALL so I could never get anything done + had a fussy overtired baby on my hands all day every day. I had no idea how to get her to sleep. Zach would come home and I'd just be a mess and so unhappy.
We started working with Nicole from Belly to Bean Sleep Consulting about a month ago and WOW what a god-send. In four weeks we have seen the following:
-Broke the nursing to sleep habit, NO MORE of that. We now do our nap or bed routine and simply put her in her bed and in 5-15 minutes of being soothed she's asleep.
-Established a definite wake up time (7am)
-Established a bed time (it was 9:15pm because of her age, but just in the last week she naturally started going to bed at 7pm, which I LOVE!)
-Established a feeding schedule (every 3.5 hours for her age now). This was one of the biggest problems and accomplishments. I was feeding her every 1.5 hours because I was mistaking her tired queues for hunger queues. Feeding her this often was misery for me because I felt like I just sat at home all day with my boobs out for her and it kept her from sleeping longer because her feedings were never meals--they were just snacks.
-Established a nap time routine
-Established a bed time routine
-Put black out curtains + garbage backs on the windows, got a white noise machine, and a lovey for her.
-Got her napping about 4 hours a day. She's still a short napper, but we're expectant for this to change as she gets older.
The process of all of the above was grueling hard work....nothing really came easy. It was exhausting, draining, hopeless at times, and stressful. That's why Nicole's help was SO worth it--she was there through the hard, teary times to support us, encourage us, guide us, advise us. There were so many times I wanted to give up and throw in the towel, but she kept me going when I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. She worked with us to devise a plan that did not include crying it out--which is why we hired her because every other method I'd ever heard of/came across involved some sort of crying it out.
Everything in this process was basically trial and error to figure out what worked for her. At first we tried getting her to sleep in a swing--that didn't go well. Then we tried rocking her until drowsy--that didn't work either. So finally we simply placed her in her bed and shhhh'd her and soothed her. Bingo that worked! We had to learn her wake times and watch her tired queues. Learning to work with her and not against her took a lot, a lot of time....the whole 4 weeks!
As I put her to sleep tonight (at 7:00pm !), I just smiled at her, remembering the days that we both just cried at every nap attempt. All that hard work paid off. We have a sleeping baby. We have a napping baby.
We haven't arrived yet--we're still working on extending how long she naps and breaking her of eating once or twice at night--but we're going at those things with such optimism because we know it'll happen with consistency and persistence.
If you have sleep issues (who doesn't?), give Nicole @ Belly to Bean a call. You won't regret it. You need more sleep :)
