Cycles
Thanks to Meg, I realized a useful little tip about sleep cycles that’s come in handy for naps. By paying attention to times of awakenings, I realized that The Boy’s sleep cycle is about 90-120 minutes. This means that about every 1.5-2 hours, he’s going to enter a light sleep phase. During this phase, it’s not uncommon for him to wake up. Think about when you’re sleeping at night, wake up for a moment, roll over or adjust the covers and go back to sleep. It’s the same thing except babies don’t know what they want or can’t do it themselves or just don’t know that they can/are supposed to go back to sleep.
Our doctor actually confirmed this during a routine visit Q&A. He said it was perfectly natural and most kids grow out of it pretty quickly. The cry-it-out method is an attempt to force it and is successful for some. As mentioned before, not for us.
But, my point is that knowing this is very useful for naptimes. First, if nighttime is still tough, I recommend napping with your baby. I found that when I slept with The Boy, I could add an extra 1-1.5 hours to his nap. I am certain (because I saw him) that he would hit his light sleep mode, open his eyes (maybe even pop his head up) and, upon seeing me right there, get comfortable and go back to sleep. This extra sleep makes for a happier kid. When he wakes up, after a little cuddling, he’s ready to go. Prior to this, I learned that placing him in his room and doing my own thing resulted in a 1-1.5 hour nap with a cranky wake up.
So, if you’re not going to nap, I’d recommend only planning on doing something for an hour. Then, go read a book or surf the net on your laptop or something in his room. When he wakes up, hopefully, he’ll spot you quickly and go back to sleep on his own. If not, you’re right there to help soothe him back down.
Now, there were times when 1.5 hours was as good as it got. I recognized those thanks to the cranky wake ups. Cranky wake ups always meant he wanted more sleep. The faster I got to him and the faster I helped him get back there, the better he slept. Thus, the napping next to him really helped since I was right there to soothe him. Soon after I started that, I stopped having to soothe… my presence seemed to be enough.
As for nighttime, this may be a useful tool to be prepared for the first wake up. Depending on everyone’s bedtime preferences, you could plan on putting him down 1.5 hours before you go to bed yourself. This almost guarantees freedom from the “Dang-it!-I-was-almost-asleep” wake up since you’ve got 1.5 hours to fall asleep. For us, establishing an early bedtime was very important, so we didn’t consider this. This resulted in a 7:30pm bedtime, a 9-9:30pm wake up, 10pm bedtime for us, and a 10:30-11pm wake up (which was an “I-was-almost-asleep” wake up).
A quick note on the early bedtime: Friends of ours have 8 and 10 y.o. girls that go to bed @ 7:30pm. Now, they don’t go to sleep, but they do have to get ready and be in their bedrooms @ 7:30 and stay there. This allows our friends to stay focused on their marriage, sit, talk, entertain, or just relax. Meanwhile, the girls read or play by themselves. Then, at different, but appropriate times for each, they get a lights out and tucked in. When we inquired how they accomplished this, they said 7:30’s been their bedtimes since they were babies, they’ve only shifted sleeptime when it was age appropriate. (Also, for us, we tried a later bed time to try to get a later morning wake up and it only resulted in a same time morning wake up and a crankier kid, so we figured we may as well establish a firm early bedtime.)
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