Requesting advice from parents

[sarah_tn]

Everyone —

My husband and I have been fortunate to care for a baby for the past 6 weeks. We have never had a baby in the house before. It’s wonderful, but we’re trying to get her on a sleeping schedule. We feed her a “goodnight” formula (4-6 ounces) at 11:00 (her formula with a couple teaspoons of baby rice cereal to keep her satisfied), and have her sleeping through, to around 4:00 a.m. After that, she doesn’t usually go back to sleep until 5:30, but we’re supposed to be up at 5:45 so that means we’re sleeping from 11:30 (or 12) to 4:00 each night. We are soooo tired! 11:30 is late, but if we do this any earlier, we’ll be looking at two wakeup calls during the night. We’ve tried going to bed earlier, but the amount of sleep during that time bracket seems to be about the same.

Getting used to less sleep is part of the package, and it’s definitely worth it. I wouldn’t give this up for the whole world. She is absolutely wonderful. I work full time outside the home though, and need advice because we’re starting to feel the fatigue. Can anybody make any recommendations on how we might be able to improve the baby’s sleeping schedule?

Thanks, for any advice.

[kfchimera]

I’m struggling to get some rest too, and my doctor suggested the rice cereal for my baby (5mos) and also putting him on a feeding schedule during the day. In the meantime, I have read a lot of sleep books, but there’s not a magic bullet out there, some kids are tougher than others. We have found room darkening shades work, and white noise cd and staggering our sleep times between me and hubby. That might be tough for you if both you and your husband have to get up equally early–but maybe one of you could sleep before the baby does and take turns getting up to rock/soothe.
The white noise cd is from the Happiest baby on the block series–good series, he has a lot of tips that seem to work. We’re still struggling though (but I’m nursing exclusively, so just starting to wean off nighttime feeding right now, and break the nurse-him-to-sleep while I surf the forums habit 😆 )

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

[Author]

Posts