Saturday, January 21, 2012

My kid eats like clockwork

Which would be great, and actually pretty convenient, if "clockwork" didn't mean every 3 hours at night. ARGH. Of course, before having a newborn again, I knew there would be some rough times ahead. I knew there would be several months of getting up every few hours. And I was okay with it. When Noah arrived, it turned out that he slept great for a newborn, up to 5 hours at a stretch sometimes. No more.

Most of the time, he is up at 12, 3, and 6, or some variation on that theme. We have tried several different things:
- "dreamfeed" him at 11 p.m. to try to catch a 5-6 hour stretch, doesn't work
- formula feed for last feed of night, doesn't work
- cry it out when we wakes up, doesn't work (more like I can't take it after 10 minutes or so, so I feed him)

Today, I started working on better sleep hygiene in general, and also started keeping track of naps and meals. By sleep hygiene, I mean that he took all of his naps in his crib rather than the swing, and I put him down awake but tired. The average for today (daytime) was 2.5 hrs between feeds and 2 hrs between naps. WTH, I have a 5 month old, not a newborn! Every 2.5 hrs during the day and every 3 at night, no wonder I'm exhausted! So, as you can you tell, I'm a little frustrated and out of ideas. I'm not asking for him to sleep 12 hours straight, just maybe a 5 or 6 hour stretch. On the *few* nights that he's only gotten up at 4 a.m., I feel fabulous the next day. My ultimate goal is to have him sleeping through the night before school starts in May, but I REALLY would love to see some progress by then.

OK, /end rant.

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