Wonder where this phrase comes from considering I've spent the last 7 months (ok not the first 3 months at least) trying to get S to sleep through the night.
I had heard a lot about getting up at night for feeds and given that my last 2 months of pregnancy consisted of many nightly trips to the loo i thought i was well prepared. Well S has not given any of the troubles of the "night" babies you hear about who sleep during the day and play during the night. My nephew was one such baby and my sis-in-law had a tough time managing him. S was already regulated into the morning night cycle. The first 10 days went off relatively smoothly. She would sleep around 11 then get up around 4 am for a feed and then again around 7 so not bad i thought. Then the doc visit happened where i found S was not putting on weight and more importantly was wetting herself only 4-5 times a day (for non-parents, a baby must wet herself at least 6 times a day to maintain weight and more than that to put on weight, any frequency less than this means she is not getting enough nutrition). I am one of those mothers who maintain charts on baby feeding times and promptly showed it to the doc who immediately said the time between night time feedings was too long and at least for the first 1-2 months babies should be fed every 2-3 hours max. So i promptly used to set the alarm clock for 21/2 hours after the previous feed and get up at least twice every night - around 1 am and then again around 4 am. Some of my friends' doctors had given contrary advice to let the baby sleep and feed when the baby gets up but given S not putting on weight i decided to follow my doc's advice.
The first 3-4 months passed with this schedule. I was at my mum's place from the 2nd to the 5th month so while i had these gruelling night schedules I would give S to my mom at 5:30 in the mornign and get some good sleep till 8:30 in the morning.
somewhere in between the 1 am feed stopped and it was 11:00- then 4-then 7 which is reasonably ok, but i was having problems getting back to sleep after the 4 am feed so usualli would be awake till about 5;30 and again have to get up at 7 am. Then S started sleeping at 9 pm every night around the 4th mopnth and i would have to wake her up for the 11 pm. feed, i used to do this, otherwise her stomach alarm clock would have her waking up at 2 am (and i did not want to wake up at this time!!!). Half the time she was too sleepy to finish the feed and i used to wonder whether it was really worth waking her up for it.
Anyway from the 6th month the evening solids started, and I also moved back to my own place. S started sleeping for 6-7 hours at a stretch- unfortunately this was from 8:30 om to 3:30 am so another round of changing of feed timings and now finally it is reasonable from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. unfortunately S still wakes up 2-3 times at least every night and I have to rock her back to sleep/ give her some water. The hubby plays no part in this as he sleeps through the night (wondering whether the phrase should be renamed as "sleeping like a hubby") and doesn;t even know when S is crying. Couple of time i poked him in the night and asked to rock her to sleep and the answer was let S sleep in another room and then you'll get some sleep as well ( I think some parents are ok with letting their children cry it out and learn to fall asleep, and i used to think i would do this as well, but I just cannot bear to hear S crying so i pick her up and rock her back to sleep still some 3-4 times in the night). It's tough since i've started working as well so am waiting for the time S starts to sleep through the night. Wondering whether the frequent getting up is due to teething pain as S is drooling a lot as well, and loves to chomp on anything (except her solids) including her book which I am patiently trying to read to her and including her potty box (named so since it stores the cotton we use to wipe her potty)
Keeping fingers crossed!!
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