Eva sleeps A LOT – at least three hours per nap during the day and for a week now, all through the night. And she’s just slightly over seven weeks old!!! Now while that’s great for me and Nil (we get to sleep really well), it’s not all that great for my breasts or Eva in the long run because she prefers to sleep rather than feed. Since she started sleeping through the night, I’ve noticed that she only feeds for six times throughout the day instead of the average eight times. At her age, she needs a healthy balance of both as feeding frequently will provide her with the nutrients that she needs AND sleep will allow her body to use those nutrients to grow & develop.
I have since decided to go back to feeding on “schedule” since feeding on demand totally doesn’t work in our case. If she’s hungry, I’ll definitely feed her but otherwise, it’s every three hours during the day with the last feed at midnight or 1am followed by the next feed at 5 or 6am. This is to ensure that she get enough of both worlds.
Now, I’ve had people ask me if I have any tips to helping Eva sleep through the night and take longish naps during the day. Well, let me remind you that every baby is different and Eva, by nature, has always loved sleeping since birth. I guess it’s how I approach the whole situation.
For one thing, I follow her cues – if she starts yawning, and shows disinterest/boredom and/or her eyes are swollen, it means she’s tired and wants a nap. If I don’t put her down immediately, she’ll either stay awake or start fussing. If it’s the former, it’s bad news for us at night because she’ll be too tired out to sleep and will definitely start to throw a tantrum. It’ll also affect her feeding schedule because she’d get less sleep, yet will have to wake up to feed and so forth.
But me alone just following her cues is pointless if other people like Nil and/or my parents aren’t doing the same thing. I emphasize the importance of sleep to them by reminding them constantly that when she wants to sleep, she HAS to sleep. Play time can wait. Keeping her awake just for the sake of playing is not smart. If she wants to play, she’ll stay awake and you’ll see signs of it.
Starting a schedule, especially at bedtime, helps as well. Since the move, I made bedtime a routine and it’s always the same thing every night – a feed followed by a diaper change and some lullabies/music & carrying with minimal distraction and in her room. No TV, no bright lights, and all that. Her room will be nice and cool – it has to be inviting. It’s the same with adults so why not employ the same tips/advice for babies too?
During the day, she naps after a feed and/or play and it’s always on the couch, with some noise. This is to avoid having to tiptoe around her, which will be hell because you can’t do anything at all. I started this when she was young – vacuum cleaner, laptop, and etc – so now, she can sleep through just about anything and everything.
Now, during growth spurts, these tips don’t work because then, she’s just interested in eating more than sleeping, and rightly so. But one tip has definitely helped to a degree and that’s babywearing. It calmed her down considerably and makes it just easier to put her down for naps. We use to put her in the stroller back in France/Switzerland and go for walks to get her to sleep – any form of motion is good.
Whatever you choose to do, (I have been told), that babies will come into their age when it comes to sleeping so those days of lack of sleep may soon be a thing of the past!
