Dohm saves the day!

One of the things that has brought us a lot of freedom as parents is playing white noise when Kiyomi sleeps.  We live in a small condo, so it can get quite noisy.  Around the 1-month mark, we burned a CD (yes, we're still living in the 90s and have a vast collection of CDs) of white noise and popped it into the CD player on repeat.  Having the white noise allows us to par-tay (ha, not really wildly) into the wee hours of the night after Kiyomi has gone to bed.

But then, yesterday, my hubby decided he would put in some other CDs to find out what kind of music Kiyomi liked.

And now the CD player rejects the white noise CD.

AHHHHHH!!! 

Cue Dohm to save the day!



Apparently the Dohm white noisemaker is the most popular.  It claims to save marriages, even!  It is the "Official Sound Conditioner of the National Sleep Foundation".  Makes it sound so effective!  All I know is, there's a fan inside and it makes enough noise to cover our outside conversations, even though there's only a door between Kiyomi and the rest of us.  Amazing.  Babies sleeping...does it get any better?!

I don't know about marriages, but this thing really saved our social lives!

Lest you think that sleep training is easy...

I am currently staring at my baby monitor.  Staring at the image of my daughter, who has been crying on and off for 15 minutes or so.  I am confused.  Should I go into her room to get her, or do I continue to let her cry it out?

My husband put her down for a nap after she yawned a few times.  That was 45 minutes ago.  She proceeded to play quietly by herself for half an hour.  Usually, after a few yawns, we put her down, she plays and calms herself down, and then she's out in 15 minutes or less.  Today, she played for half an hour.  And then started crying.  In 15 more minutes, it'll be time for her next feed.

I'm so confused.  Should I just go get her?  She seems to almost drift off, and then wakes herself up and cries.  GAAAAAH.

I wish I had the Baby Whisperer here.  She would know what to do.

Eat my fist: a sleep update

It's been about a week since we started training Kiyomi to self-soothe, and I have to say, it has gone much smoother than I expected.  The longest she cried, on and off, was about an hour.  Nowadays, she *usually* falls asleep after about 10 minutes of crying/self-soothing.  Her fist is her favourite self-soothing tool, and she often crams her hands into her mouth.  Sometimes, she extends her fingers and ends up choking herself!

I am SO proud of my little girl for learning how to self-soothe!  We've been putting her down for naps in her car seat, so that she would learn to nap anywhere, and the other day, she even put herself to sleep at church!

As for me...my husband commented that I seem much happier, and I have to say, Kiyomi's self-soothing ability has revolutionized my quality of life!  I suddenly have so much more free time (alas, I guess I must finally get around to the laundry!), and because I know she'll take a nap every eat, activity, sleep cycle, I can also plan to rest.  Ha, although most of the time that she's napping, I'm staring at the monitor, watching her sleep!

Praise God for self-soothing babies!

Sleep training

Let me start with a disclaimer.  Every baby is different, and every family is different.  What works for some doesn't work for others.  There is so much literature out there regarding sleep training, whether you should/should not do it, and how it should be done.  I'm only documenting this so that I remember what we did with Kiyomi, so that we can learn from it and hopefully improve on it for our second child.   I will say, for any technique we try, I'm sure we'll be praying a LOT. 

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.