Sleep Training

February 2009

With Sarah's feeding requirements of feeding her every 4-5 hours, this means we do not sleep through the night. I was struggling with getting her to go to sleep in her crib. We tried the Ferber method of letting her cry-it-out but it wasn't really working. I decided I must be doing something wrong with how I was trying to sleep train Sarah. I went to the library but they only had a VHS tape called "Your Baby Can Sleep" by Dr. Stuart Tomares M.D. and I decided that could work because I didn't really have time to read a book anyway.

Through this video I realized the things I was doing that were hindering the sleep training. These were:

1. We didn't have a consistent bedtime routine
2. I was laying down to breastfeed her in the middle of the night and often fell asleep with her OR I would have just bottle-fed her and then she would cry and I was so tired that I just brought her into bed with me because she would stop crying.

In order to have a consistent and set night time routine, I would need to feed right before to maximize the length of sleep she was able to get. In order to ensure this, I decided to set up a time schedule for feeding so she would actually eat before bed.

Sarah’s Schedule

2:00AM breastfeeding
7:00AM Lipistart feeding
Lisa gets dressed and ready for the day, quiet time (often, I sleep some more)
9:00AM wake Sarah up if she is still sleeping, feed breakfast
Sarah playtime Lisa does dishes/housework
11:00AM breastfeeding
12:00PM lunch
3:00PM Lipistart feeding
5:00PM dinner
7:00PM breastfeeding
9:00PM Lipistart feeding
put on pajamas and fresh diaper
brush teeth
read book
lullaby
prayer
9:30PM bedtime

This schedule is nice because the middle of the night feeding is always breastfeeding so I don't need to warm a bottle. This means more sleep for me. I just need to ensure that I am involved with something to keep myself awake so that I don't fall asleep with Sarah.

Also, the 7PM feeding helps with adjusting for when the schedule gets a little off during the day. Meaning: 4 hours is the longest we are to let Sarah go between daytime feedings but she may get hungry after only three hours between one set of meals and then the daily schedule is adjusted accordingly the 7PM feeding would move forward but the 9PM is constant for bedtime.

NAPS
With this routine the nap times are whenever she seems tired during the day and/or falls asleep. Some days she has 4 short naps and some days she has 2 longer naps. This sleep guy advises not to worry about the naps because if they are sleeping well at night their naps will work themselves out on their own. We just shouldn't let naps go longer than 2-3 hours.
This has worked with Sarah.

April 2009
It seemed like Sarah wasn't wanting to breastfeed as much as she wanted to eat solid food and drink the bottle. I looked into it and found that having scheduled feedings is not as good as feeding on demand and can increase the likelihood of premature weaning. At about 8-10 months baby's often (from what I found on the Internet on different sites) tend to seem like they are weaning themselves off the breast. The sites encouraged to just keep plugging away and offering the breast.

With this information, I realized the importance of keeping the schedule flexible. I feed on-demand to a certain degree. The 7PM feeding helps with this. Also, I adjust the schedule so that she often eats solid foods a short time after she has breastfed or drank a bottle.

Also, I've realized that she has shown no signs of CPT II and there is a big possibility that she may not have CPT II. With this knowledge, I just don't stress out about feeding her. I've been treating her feedings as though she were an average child. If we are out of the house and she goes past four hours but I know she has had solid foods in between and she is acting perfectly fine, I just stay calm and get to a place where I can prepare for whatever feeding is next.

This all has made life much easier to handle. Praise God.