Yup, it's more on sleep again. Babies are supposed to be sleeping 14 - 15 hours at seven months between naps and nightime - or at least that's what I remember reading somewhere, but I can't seem to find the source. I know for sure it's a lot and, since it takes up more than half of Axel's day and not nearly enough of mine, it's frequent blog fodder. I'm no sleep expert, just another momma trying to make her fumbly, bumbly way through the bleary-eyed wee hours of the morning.
We've had some sleep successes. Axel can now fall asleep on his own most nights. I wouldn't have believed it was possible three months ago. I thought I'd be rocking the child and singing My Favorite Things until he grew armpit hair and I had the unsquelchable urge to rip the whiskers off of every kitten I saw and gorge on schnitzel with noodles. Gradually, the sleep situation has gotten better, and you needn't worry about any poor kitten's whiskers or my pork consumption.
Here's a list of things that have contributed to our bedtime success:
1. We stick to the bedtime routine like a lemon cupcake to vanilla buttercream frosting. Nothing will interfere with the bedtime routine - unless it is baby-initiated or a natural disaster.
2. Our nightly routine: some mushy solids at about 6, playtime, bathtime at 6:45, baby massage/baby wrestling and yelling about the ignominy of diapers at 7:00, board book reading and page nibbling at 7:10, nursing at 7:25, and put the boy in his crib (with the humidifier on for white noise and moisture in the high alpine desert of Denver) at 7:45. This schedule shifts forward or backward a bit depending on when Axel woke up from his last nap, if my husband is on shift and I'm alone and exhausted, or if Axel seems ready for bedtime earlier. By the time we get to the books, Axel knows what's coming (sleep) and he's ready for it. I used to rock him and tunelessly sing from my vast repertoire of Beach Boys and Buddy Holly songs after 7:45 because he needed it, but I gradually cut back on the rocking and eventually got to a place where I could just put him down.
3. I put the boy down on his side and he promptly rolls to his belly. A few months ago he started choosing to sleep on his stomach, and now we've found that putting him down on his back, he gets all riled up and ready to rumble - and that requires more intervention, and no one wants that. When he's put down on his side, he looks around, rolls on to his stomach, wiggles a little, and then passes out.
4. We do not immediately intervene with all fussing. If it's been extended and is passionate (for us, that means 2 - 10 minutes and stronger than a few half-hearted whimpers), we'll go in and provide some love. At about five and a half months or six months, I discovered (in a moment of frustration and exhaustion, after putting him down after the bedtime routine and a little rocking because he wasn't asleep yet, I was seasick with all the damn rocking, and I really wanted to sit down and eat already) that he would briefly squawk and then babble to himself a bit before suddenly - almost too quickly, so abruptly that I thought maybe he'd choked on his own thumb and had to go check on him - going silent and falling asleep. He's figured out how to trigger his own awake time on/off switch - it's not a gradual dimmer, it's a switch with just two settings. Also, after six months, we decided that, if he did wake up before midnight, he would first be given a chance to sooth himself back to sleep; if that didn't work after after a little bit, my husband would go in - but there would be no nursing before 12:01 am. He's still nursing once per night, but no longer does he nurse each time he wakes up. I wanted to reinforce the links between other ways of going to sleep.
5. Axel is now in his own room. He has been for about two months now, and it was time for both of us to have a little more space. That means I don't jump immediately at his every whimper, and I have at least a few minutes of semi-coherent mushy night thinking on the walk from my room to his room to remind myself to wait at his door and see if he really needs me or if he's just fussing about and setling himself back down to sleep. He also doesn't hear us move, and he doesn't smell me right next to him and think, "Mmmmm, mmmmmilk."
So, our combination for moderate sleep success: own room, bedtime routine, white noise, a little bit of fussing, clinging to every small success, and a whole lot of luck and fairy dust. Maybe the solid foods started in the last month have helped fill up his belly, maybe he thinks all those bears and hippos in the Boyton books have the right idea about bedtime, maybe he's just tiring himself out more with all his activity. I've also got a suspicion that the introduction to sometimes falling asleep on his own that occured during his three days a week at daycare helped with sleeping at home.
All that said, he still gets up once a night between one and three to eat, and every so often more than that. Once per night seems very reasonable to me, and I'm thankful it's just once, given that he used to wake up so often I stopped counting. He also does this evil 5 am waking for the day thing from time to time. I have no idea what to do about this except stare up at my ceiling, listen to him talking to himself, and wish that he would sleep longer.
Naptime is a whole different story. Axel's got a morning nap (starting at 8 - 9, depending on when he wakes up in the morning), and an afternoon nap (starting at 12:30 - 1:30, depending on when the last nap ended). Once in awhile he throws in a third late afternoon nap. When it's naptime and he's getting tired, I scoop him up and get him ready for bed, and then try to get him to sleep by a variety of strategies. It often becomes a back and forth battle with Axel almost falling asleep then waking himself up to yell and remind me that he's tired and he wants to sleep. His morning nap is pretty short - rarely over thirty minutes - and it's often harder to get him to go down for the morning nap than the afternoon nap. My theory is that he will be better off when he's down to just the afternoon nap, since that one always lasts longer, sometimes as much as two hours, and is a smoother transition for Axel. My second theory is that I'll keep on wishing as hard as I can that it will get better, and maybe the nightime sleep fairy that's helped us out with rain down her blessings on naptime. My third theory is that the gradual trial and error that seems to have helped with the bedtime routine will eventually help us more with naptime. Some things haven't changed: I've still got enough rotating sleep theories for a dozen dissertations.
We're making progress, one night at a time.
