Thank you for all of your emails about my previous sleep entry. The main question was, now what exactly was your schedule?? There is no magic formula, but this is what worked for us. Therefore, to answer your emails in a pictoral fashion...this is what the babies schedules looked like. So far there have been 6 distinct sleep phases in their lives. If you want to count the horrible nap situation for Zane that we have going on right now, maybe I could say 7 phases. But anyway...I'll go through them.
White is awake time, Black is sleep time
1. [0 to 6 weeks]
Short waketimes, night feedings.
Babies are just born and brought home from the hospital, we have them on a 3 hour feeding schedule and naps are about 2 hours long. Their waketime is about an hour long. The 3 blue boxes represent feeding time but we did dream feeding. Dream feeding is where you lift the baby out of the crib gently, sit in the dark and quiet, feed them, burp them (change their diaper if you want to...that is if they stay calm/asleep for it) and place them back into bed with no "awake time". Note: At the 3am blue box we did not get the babies from their cribs, but they would wake up on their own for this feeding. Some days they would stretch all the way to 4am, but they mostly stuck close to 3am.
2. [6 weeks to 12 weeks]
Colic sets in.
At the 6pm wake time, the babies would eat their 6pm bottle, have a bath and then all hell would break loose. They would scream and curl up in little balls until 8:20pm. Oh, how I would watch the clock counting down until 8:20pm where magically...silence would fall over the house and the babies would drift off to sleep. We would dream feed them at 10pm and they would wake up on their own for a 2am feeding but quickly return to sleep. Consequently, because of the late bedtime, their 1st morning waketime would be ultrashort because they were overtired. Unfortunately, this would shift their 9am feeding forward as well and sort of throw part of the day off.
3. [13 weeks to 19 weeks]
Daycare begins and late nap starts to disappear, colic ends, sleeping through the night.
The morning waketime was extra long, because I had to drive them to day care. Also the naps were shorter because, well, daycare is not a very conducive environment for sleeping. Their early evening nap also started to disappear and become a catnap of 45 minutes long. The babies were both sleeping through the night and this was a blissful time in baby-raising land. Note: Colic was over so the bedtime was shifted forward.
4. [20 weeks to 25 weeks]
Early mornings, Earlier nights.
The babies were waking extra early (5:30am) and were starting to extend their evening waketime. Bedtime had to be ultra early because of the early wakeups but also both of the babies were still recovering from their illnesses (Lily=RSV, Zane=RSV, Pneumonia, Bronchiolitis)...NOTE: During this time period there were multiple night wakings (anywhere from 2 to 6 a night). Most likely because there was a lot of stress going on at this time. The babies were not sleeping in their cribs, we were not at home, Dad was living in Miami, they were still recovering from being sick...this was a very difficult time in baby-land.
5. [27 weeks to 40 weeks]
Shift from a 3 hour schedule to a 4 hour schedule.
This probably should have been done earlier but we had to get moved to Miami and settled in first. We shifted our feeding schedule from every 3 hours during the day, to every 4 hours during the day. Also, we moved East so their morning wakeup shifted forward an hour (THANK GOD!). Because of the change in schedule a nap was dropped and we now had 2 strong naps and 1 late evening catnap. Because of the catnap bedtime was a little late (around 8:15pm)
6. [41 weeks to present]
Late evening nap is dropped.
With much protest, I decided it was time for the late evening catnap to be dropped. The babies were starting to fight bedtime because that little nap was giving them too much energy before bedtime. It took almost a week for them to push through the early evening without the nap, but eventually they got there. NOTE: Because the last nap of the day was dropped, we moved bedtime earlier (anywhere from 7:15 to 7:30pm), so that the babies did not become overtired. Shifting the bedtime earlier, also shifted the morning wake-up later. PS...it's a myth that keeping a baby up later will make them sleep later, in fact, it only makes them wake-up earlier!
Sleep Queues: There is a whole list of sleeping queues that babies will give and it's up to you to watch carefully to learn them. As soon as Jason or I would start to see the babies give off their sleep vibes, we would rush them to their cribs to catch that wave of sleepiness. Early on, there weren't that many queues so it was up to us to establish their sleep cycles for them. That is sleep training.
BUT! If you are going to try to sleep train your child (or your next one) just remember the old saying.... You can lead a baby to their crib, but you can't make them sleep. Somedays nothing you do will work, and other days it all magically falls into place.
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