V was born in the night and the first night we had together he slept 8 hours straight I bragged to everyone that I had the perfect baby and the first night he slept all the way through, little did I realise that he was actually probably tired from the whole labour process.
The second night and following nights we had a lot of problems getting him to sleep/settling we made a lot of first time parent mistakes we didn't really know when he was hungry (I couldn't really tell if he was receiving food or not), when to change his nappy and how to change it properly, whether he was cold (due to the fact the hospital air conditioning was on full blast), wanted to be hugged, etc. it was driving us crazy and we honestly thought we were the worst parents on earth, we were both so sleep deprived.
After speaking with a lactation consultant we realised that he was in fact hungry and that I was not producing enough milk - I started expressing so we actually knew how much he was eating and topping up V's feeds with formula and was advised that he should be fed every 3.5 - 5 hours max. During the day I would find V would sleep past 5 hours sometimes and I was not sure how to wake him and a lot of family and friends would tell me do not worry about them sleeping past feeds let them sleep and the baby will wake up when they were hungry. This was the worst piece of advice we could have listened to. We became sleep deprived and were not able to properly function.
I thought to myself there has to be another way - I spoke to the lactation consultant and I did some research on the internet and found that you should wake a sleeping baby to get them into some loose routine - nothing strict at this stage as they are quite young. So we gave it a go and started waking V every 4 hours for a feed and then by about 2.5 months we commenced following the daily routines that have been posted on the Tresillian website - I believe this website is a fabulous resource and most questions are able to be answered straight from the website, however, they do have a helpline parents can call.
Now at 19 weeks old, V has a strict routine and sleeps from about 7.30 pm until about 2.00am which he wakes up for a nappy change and rollover feed he then wakes up again at 7.30am for a feed and we go into his routine. On the odd occasion he will sleep through the whole night. I believe this is because of putting him in a routine which we made strict from about 3 months which primarily included waking him up for feeds and trying to schedule things in his awake times.
Whilst I know there are some parents out there who do not believe a routine is necessary for their children in our case we needed one. In the end what works for one baby does not necessarily work for another.
For those parents who are interested the Tressillian website is located here and the daily routines for 0 - 6 months and 6 - 14 months are also available as well as settling techniques for up to 12 month olds and toddler settling techniques
What have been your experiences with sleep and settling with your little one?
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