Miss Z was born around 4pm. They say that babies that are born during the day don’t sleep at night… I have no idea is that’s true, but the fact of the matter is that after 48 hours of practically no sleep at night, I was pulling my hair out. Thankfully, my Mom was around and we took shifts.
The midwife came for the first visit. She was an old Jamaican lady… she had the funniest accent. At the end of the appointment I asked her if there was something I could do to make Miss Z sleep more at night. She said to me (with her very cute accent): “If baby is like this during the day (closing her eyes), she’s like that during the night (eyes wide open)! Keep her awake during the day!” she recommended.
Great, I thought, how are you supposed to keep a newborn awake?
Fortunately for me, in the next few weeks, a friend recommended a book… a book that became my Baby Bible. A book that many Moms will probably never have heard of, many Moms love and many Moms hate… as with everything.
For me, it was my life boat. I loved the structured routine, I loved the stuff she warns parents to be aware of and not do, I love almost everything about this book. It’s called “Baby Whisperer” by Tracy Hogg and you can find it everywhere.
Now, I know structured routine (especially on newborns) is not for everyone… but, as I mentioned before, I knew nothing about being a Mom… I needed an instruction manual. And being the control freak project manager that I am, this was right up my alley (Mr A and Miss A were on this routine since day 1).
And so I started reading this book at every possible moment. And I found that I could keep Miss Z awake. Just after feeding, I didn’t let her fall asleep. I tickled her ears, her feet, her nose… I blew softly in her face… At first, I could get only a few minutes of awakeness out of her, but as time went by, it grew longer.
By the way, I have employed the same techniques with all my kids. The only difference I guess is that when it’s the first child, everything is new and harder… so you’ll probably hear me talk more about Miss Z. There will be times I will mention the others, especially when I’ve had to do things slightly differently… no baby is the same, right?
So, you may be asking yourself… I kept her awake and then what? Well, then, as soon as she started yawning, I would swaddle her and put her in bed. And she would sleep. Sometimes I had to stay with her a bit, pat her gently on the back or the bum. I always tried to hide so she wouldn’t see me. I patted at the rhythm of the heart beat – tum tum, tum tum… And then I started making the breaks in between longer and longer, until I just stopped. Sometimes I would stay with her for 20 minutes, sometimes 5… but I always tried not to pick her up. 99% of the time, she fell asleep by herself, in her bed. After a while, I didn’t even have to stay. Swaddle, put down, tuck in, kiss, and off I go.
At night, I would do a calming bedtime routine (including a bath) and I would put her down the same way. In the first few months, I would cluster feed her before and after the bath and then dream feed her at 11pm, so she would go longer stretches at night. I dropped the middle of the night feed very early on (around 3 months old) and I would try to delay the waking and first feed of the morning a little more every few days by using the dummy.
My kids slept really good naps. 1 ½ hours at least. Sometimes they would go for 3 hours. And at night they slept from 7pm to 7am. This didn’t mean they didn’t wake up in between. They did. But I just put them right back to sleep. You might think I’m lucky. I don’t think so. I think that I did a good job teaching them how to sleep. There will be plenty of opportunities for me to tell you how. Watch this space (as they say ;))