As I write this, Kiyomi is on her 3rd nap of the day, and I'm intently watching her sleep on the baby monitor. I decided that I would start teaching Kiyomi to self-soothe on my birthday (yesterday), and that we should establish more of a routine so that we could continue to read her crying cues correctly.
Some signs that Kiyomi was able to self-soothe:
- she can now pick up and hold objects (instead of randomly & accidentally grabbing objects)
- she has been sucking on her fist, and now fingers, for the past few weeks, and it seemed to quiet her when she was crying
- she started sleeping for 4-5 hour stretches overnight (and even some random 6-hr ones!), where I would hear her fuss and wake up, but she would go back to sleep if I left her
Now, I'm sure she had self-soothing skills before this as well, but we're comfortable with having spent the first three months of her life responding quickly to her cries, and walking her around to get her to sleep (although this was wearing on us, which was one of the reasons I decided we should sleep-train her).
I'll start with how we were getting her to sleep before. For her bedtime (read: not naptime), I'm still basically nursing her to sleep, although as she gets better with the self-soothing for naptime, we'll change up the schedule. Basically, it's a bath, fresh diaper, both breasts, a bottle, swaddle, and then back on one breast again. We give her the extra bottle at this bedtime feeding to help her stay asleep longer. Some call this the "dream feed". We tried putting her to bed without swaddling her, but it was too early, and she would wake herself up when she flailed her arms uncontrollably. Or, she would catch sight of her hand, and then her eyes would pop open so she could stare at it.
During the day, we were on a cycle where I was feeding, changing her diaper and playing with her, and then carrying her around when she got fussy. While being carried, she liked to look around at everything, and we could tell she was getting tired once she started to yawn. Now, here's the difference. Before, when she started to yawn, we'd just keep carrying her around. Yesterday, I started putting her down into her car seat (we decided to train her to nap in her car seat, as it's portable and she'll be able to nap anywhere) once she started yawning, and then shushed, patted, and slightly rocked the car seat as she cried.
The first time I tried this, she cried/whined for about half an hour. I thought we were off to a great start, because the next time, it took her only 20 minutes! Ha, and then she showed me. She cried off and on for almost an hour in the afternoon. Sigh.
Today has been better, and I think there's a nap schedule that's starting to emerge. She sleeps for a larger chunk in the morning, and then in the late afternoon. In between, she catnaps for half an hour or so. She still cries and whines a bit, but this last time, she only whined for 10 minutes! Basically, as she cries/whines, I sit beside her and shush her or pat her chest. Once she quiets down, I stop the shushing and patting. Truth be told, when she's crying, I try to distract myself by playing Bejeweled. Otherwise, I find myself looking at her, and she'll stare at me while she cries, which just breaks my heart. My mantra is, "Avoid eye contact."
This whole concept of self-soothing was totally foreign to me until we had Kiyomi. I had no idea babies needed help getting to sleep, and that most couldn't do it naturally on their own. At the beginning, I was so puzzled as to why she couldn't just, "let go", and fall asleep, but as I've been up in the middle of the night with her, it becomes more clear to me, because I have trouble getting back to sleep!
Sometimes I wish someone would rock me to sleep.
I'll have to write another update again when we figure out what works consistently, as it's all an experiment right now.
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