Teach Your Baby to Sleep, Part III

Sweetness is 5 weeks old tomorrow and she's sleeping through the night!!! Not every night but she has done it a few times and I'm hopeful that it will happen more and more often. Last week she slept one 9 hour stretch and this week she has slept 6-8 hours straight almost every night. I call anything over 6 hours, sleeping through the night.

I have a few more reader's tips and questions to share.

Mrs. Organic said: "I let my babies get used to sleeping when the house was all noisy - no tiptoeing for us. It makes for better sleepers (in my experience)."

I agree. I actually keep my babies in the living room for the first month or so. I just moved Sweetness into the playroom (she doesn't have a room of her own yet, poor thing) a few days ago and it is right next to the living room. I leave the door open and let Lovely run in and out with her toys. I will be moving her into one of the kid's rooms pretty soon but I haven't decided which one yet.

Main Mom said: My newborns are hard to wake up, so do you have any suggestions on how to wake a baby enough to nurse?

Newborns are such sleepyheads that it is hard to keep them awake long enough to fill them up. I always nurse on one side until they fall asleep. Then I change their diaper to wake them up enough to nurse on the other side. I unwrap their warm blankets too. If that doesn't work I rub their feet or ears or do any annoying thing I can to keep them awake. It sounds like baby abuse but it's for their own good right? If all of that fails then I let them sleep for another 30 minutes and try again or I just hope they got enough to eat and wait till the next feeding. They do better after the first week or so.

Laura said: Does that mean you don't put her to bed with her pacifier at all?

*No I don't. Usually the only time Sweetness gets a pacifier is if Persistence is watching her while I shower or have a nap. (Persistence is my 8 year old, not the three year old in the photos!) She is a great babysitter and can usually get her to sleep without one but when all else fails she gives her a pacifier. We also use one at Church and other times when we're away from home.

If you let your baby use a pacifier at night you will probably be getting up all night long to put it back in their mouth. I tried that with my first and it was not fun!

Some women like to be human pacifiers. If I have just nursed my baby and she starts getting fussy she is tired. I have never had a baby that hung out on the breast. They nursed when they were hungry and stopped when they were full. If I try to nurse them when they are tired they turn their heads and scream so off to bed they go! And I cannot fall asleep while my baby is nursing. I wish I could but I can't so I feed her and and then she goes back to bed.

Kim said: One thing I like to suggest to people (if asked) is if your baby is going to be sharing a room with an older sibling don't be afraid to start it early and even before they are sleeping through the night. I move my kids out of my room at about 6-8 weeks old and right into a shared room. The older siblings get used to the middle of the night feedings and usually sleep through it by night three. Also, it gets them (baby and sibling) used to sleeping through sounds of movement, coughing, sleep talking, getting up for a drink or to go potty, diaper changes...or anything else. My kids that shared rooms as infants are my best sleepers.

I think it's good for kids to share rooms for many reasons but it definitely makes better sleepers. When my oldest were little they each had their own rooms. We slept out of town in a hotel room once for three days and no one got ANY sleep. They were both up all night long every single night. It was a nightmare! As soon as we got home I moved them into the same room and they have been good sleepers ever since.

*There have been a couple times when I was so deliriously tired and Sweetness refused to go to sleep so I put her next to me in bed with a pacifier. That's only happened a couple times. The moral of the story is do what works for you and your baby. You can make any plan you want but in the end you do whatever you have to do to save your precious post partum sanity.

Disclaimer - I have to say this in every post so no one misunderstands me.

If my baby is fussy and I KNOW FOR A FACT that she is tired and not hungry I always try to nurse her JUST IN CASE she might be hungry. Then I put her to bed. If my baby wakes up at night I ALWAYS FEED HER. I never try to get her to go back to sleep without nursing her. If your baby is hungry, FEED HER, FEED HER, FEED HER!!! And then put her to bed because she's probably tired from all that eating.