..to accept the things I can't change. Courage, to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.
That's been my prayer for awhile, and more so lately with this sleep stuff. We've hit a bit of a crossroads.
Naps are great (knock on wood!). Addie has two naps-- one at about 8:30, the second at about 12:30. Both last an hour and forty-five minutes to sometimes over two hours. A third nap seems to be needed and when that happens she naps about 45 minutes to an hour. So, she naps about a total of at least four hours a day. The nap pattern coincides with what Dr Weissbluth said about some kids needing more naps than others, a mix of short and long naps.
Bedtimes have been hard to figure out. We tried skipping that third nap and putting her to bed when our toddler goes down, about six pm. But no matter what naps have happened that day, no matter what combo or length of naps, she wakes every forty minutes or so if we put her to bed before 8pm. My mom says this is because 6-10 pm is considered babies "social hour". They just seem to be programmed to want to stay awake. There seems to be some truth to that in our case. So right now we are focusing on making sure that third nap happens, even if it's as late as 5:30. Then when she wakes we are bringing her downstairs until between 8 and 8:30pm. Every time she goes down around that time she stays asleep at least 2-3 hours. I even crawled into bed without waking her at all last night.
The glitch is that between 7 and 8 last night she seemed really tired. Also, at 4 am she did her usual wake up and want to stay awake talking and such. Fortunately I just had her nurse some more and then she fell off back to sleep.
The crossroads I'm at is having tried all that I can to make nighttime rest a bit more, uh, restful. I really don't want to let her cry. I tried it for a bit and it made me sick to do it. That doesn't mean I wouldn't ever consider it. I would be willing to try it briefly if we really needed to in order to help her establish a pattern that gives her the rest that she needs.
So that's the question. Is she getting enough nighttime sleep? I'm going to continue on for a week or so and make that third nap a regular occurrence, and keep her up until 8pm after that. We'll see how it goes. I'm also going to ask the pediatrician today what she thinks. I'm also going to continue to go to bed early because when I'm unhappy from nightwakings I generally, albeit inadvertantly, spread my less-than-joyful mood to the rest of the family.
So that's where we are. I'm going to write a quick summary today in a separate post about what HAS worked from the HSHHC book. Mostly because of an online poster who is experiencing a similiar problem with sleep deprivation in her eight month old. I hope sharing this helps a bit!
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