The Little Dahl-ling: 5 Months Old's Sleep Patterns

Canon continues to grow every day. All week I've been thinking that he just looks so big to me... especially his head. I think he gets more and more adorable...which is a good thing because in some ways, he's more and more difficult to tend. I need to be more careful about what I do with him because I can tell that he's learning more about his surroundings... and he doesn't really like to be alone very much. If I don't watch it, he'll be mobile before I really baby-proof this place.

With growing older, sleeping patterns change, and it's always a challenge to keep track of how he should be sleeping. That being said, I think I might have been doing something wrong this whole time in regards to Canon's nighttime sleep. Often people ask if he "sleeps through the night" as they would about any baby. For a long time I figured that since he was younger than 6 months, he was still too little for me to allow him to "cry it out." However, as I reviewed a handout from my pediatrician, I read that babies his age shouldn't be waking up more than once per night to feed. Well, there have only been a handful of times when he woke up only once. Most of the time he's up twice between midnight and 6AM, but it's not abnormal for him to still want to eat every 2 hours some mornings. For a while I would brush it off thinking that it was due to growth spurts. Then, when I mentioned that to Mark he said that meant that Canon was going through growth spurts every other week.

I've come to the realization that's it probably just all my fault. Canon does sleep through the night for about 11-12 hours at a time, but he wakes up 3-4 times throughout that span. When he wakes up, I go in and give him the pacifier. If he doesn't fall right to sleep, I pick him up to feed him, and he sleepily nurses until he's dead asleep within 10 minutes. Only recently have I considered that he might just need to be held for a brief moment before falling back to sleep. I always figured if I coddled him like that, he'd never learn to self-soothe. I have a hard time letting him just cry for 5 minutes (like my pediatrician suggested) because if it's such a quick fix to give him the binky, why would I let him cry and cry and wake himself up more? I know he needs to learn how to soothe himself back to sleep, but I really want my sleep too, and the binky works so well. Therefore, recently I've been waiting to go to him when he wakes during his daytime naps. That way I'm not so bothered because I miss sleep, but it also helps him to learn that it's okay if I don't come right away. I hope that this will actually help when it comes to night wakings, that he won't get as upset if I'm not there within 1 minute, like usual up to this point. *crosses fingers*

Well, now that I've started him on rice cereal, he's been getting more full at night (generally), and last night was the best night he's ever had. The first time he awoke was after 4:30AM. S-W-E-E-T!!! I think I did attempt to allow him to cry longer before going in to get him, and it turned out that I didn't even need to go in at all. I can say that this better sleep is associated with eating rice cereal, but I believe it's actually more related to the fact that he's transitioning to only 2 naps per day. As he refuses to sleep when I expect him to be sleepy, he stays awake until he's practically cranky, then he crashes for a nap. On these days he seems to sleep better at night. Although, this hasn't been going on for very long, so I think I need about another week to determine how true that statement is. I'm trying to find time to read more of the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth because I've found it very helpful so far. Are there any tricks or bits of information that you've found particularly helpful when it comes to helping your child sleep better through the night? (I am really looking forward to sleeping through the night again because these months of sleep deprivation have finally caught up to me. The first couple of months I was able to make it through because of a rare nap and because I simply just had to do it. Now, I feel tired more often...now that the novelty of having a baby to tend has worn off.)

Here are some fun shots of the growing cutie-pie!