Follow the baby, not the “experts”
Follow the baby, not the so-called “experts” is very sage advice I got from Chris’ mom when Natalie was a baby. No expert knows your baby, and the best way to make yourself stressed as a parent is to try and mold your baby into what an “expert’s” ideal of what babies should be doing. Although I think it’s great advice that we’ve mostly followed, I did, on occasion, get sucked into thinking I was doing something wrong, usually in terms of Natalie’s sleeping. But when we stopped reading books, stopped following other people’s advice, and went back to following Natalie’s cues, it was easier, and less stressful. Was it sometimes uncomfortable to share a bed with a baby/toddler who doesn’t understand sharing space? Yes, but not nearly as bad as waking up several times a night to feed said baby or spending hours trying to get said baby to sleep by herself, only to have her wake up again. Did it suck having a kid who didn’t remotely sleep through the night until she was well over two years old? Yes. But not nearly as much as trying in vane to force Natalie into doing something she so, so clearly wasn’t ready to do.
Taking the path of least resistance is scary because it forces parents to hand over control to the child. Losing control, in my estimation, is what makes parenting so frustrating. But letting go and trusting that things will come together is a good life lesson, especially for control freaks like me. What we’ve found in making this our parenting style, is that an opportunity always presented itself for making changes when the child is ready. And our patience in waiting for those opportunities was always rewarded with smooth transitions.
Fitting with my trying to control things, before Miranda was born, I planned on doing things differently in terms of sleep. I planned to get her sleeping in her crib, in her own room from day one so she would be used to it, because part of me still thought that Natalie was a “bad” sleeper because we did something wrong. Luckily, when Miranda was born, I came to my senses and remembered some good advice about sleep and survival in the first 12 weeks: by any means necessary. In other words, follow your baby, not the “experts.”
I also discovered that when Miranda was born, I had absolutely no desire to put her down. Ever. Parenting an infant for the second time makes you realize how quickly it passes and how you have to treasure each moment. So I think for the first two weeks (at least) I parked myself on the couch and Miranda slept snuggled against me. Or Chris, on the occasion that I had to, you know, eat, use the bathroom, shower, and spend time with Natalie.
And so far, Miranda has been a great sleeper (knocking wood furiously!). With the exception of a couple of weeks where she was fussy and hard to settle in the evening, Miranda has been amazingly easy going. We figured out her sleep formula early on (swaddle, pacifier, vibrating bouncy seat, white noise) and as long as we stuck with that, she’s been sleeping fine. At night, she’s been starting out in the bouncy seat and when she woke up to eat, I brought her in bed with me, where she also slept well.
At her two month check-up, I let the doctor get in my head and it knocked me off my game. Dr. Stephen (who I LOVE as a pediatrician, by the way) asked how Miranda was sleeping and I told her everything was fine. Then I said (only half-seriously) that I was a bit worried about what would happen when Miranda outgrew the bouncy seat and that I was considering buying a vibrating crib mattress. Big mistake. Of course Dr. Stephen replied by telling me that Miranda shouldn’t have to rely on vibrations to sleep, and that it would be best to try and get her used to the crib as soon as possible. And I immediately panicked, thought about how I was doing it all wrong, and went home determined to get Miranda sleeping in her crib.
“Operation-get-Miranda-to-sleep-in-her-crib” actually started out okay. I think she slept for 3 hours or so in the crib at the start of the night. But when she woke up to nurse, I couldn’t get her to stay asleep in the crib for more than five minutes. Finally, at 2 am, after an hour of picking her up, rocking her, burping her, nursing her, walking her, re-swaddling her, etc, etc, every 5 minutes I came to my senses. I remembered that sleep is more important than doing it “right” (whatever the hell that means) and that if I was patient, ignored the “experts” and followed Miranda, an opportunity would present itself at the time when Miranda was ready to sleep in her crib.
This weekend, opportunity knocked—a lot sooner than I anticipated! First, Miranda took a nap in her bouncy seat, unswaddled. She had fallen asleep in the mei tai carrier while I was at the farmer’s market and I had already transferred her into the car, and then from the car into the house. Since she was already asleep, I didn’t want to disturb her by wrangling her into the swaddle blanket. We’ve done it before because she wouldn’t stay asleep otherwise, but I decided to risk it. Much to my delight, she slept for over an hour!
Later that afternoon, while we were working in the yard, Miranda was laying on a blanket. She became fussy, which I didn’t quite understand because she had recently woken up from a good nap, was fed, and had a clean, dry diaper. My hands were covered in dirt from gardening, so rather than pick her up, I just stuck the pacifier in her mouth whenever it fell out. That seemed to be all she needed to calm down. Then, despite the noise of Natalie dropping rocks into a metal bucket and numerous squawking birds, Miranda fell asleep. On her own. Unswaddled. And she slept like that, on a blanket in the shade, for over an hour. Given our history with sleep challenges, we were quite shocked. So astounded that we documented the milestone with pictures:
Lounging Miranda She hasn’t quite settled on which finger to suck on and goes back and forth between her thumb and other fingers.
Miranda fell asleep on her own!!
Conked out
That night, Miranda went to sleep in her crib without a problem. We did swaddle her, since we didn’t want to change more than one part of the routine at once. She slept for 4 hours, I got up to nurse her and she went back to sleep in her crib without a problem and slept for another 4 hours. Then she slept another 2 hours in bed with us. The next night, she woke up after 45 minutes to nurse (she was so tired when I initially put her down that she hadn’t really eaten a full “meal”). She was smiling at me when I put her back in the crib, as if she thought she was waking up from a nap. I decided to try and leave the room while she was still wide awake, just to see what would happen. She fell asleep by herself and stayed asleep for another 4 hour stretch. And at 6 am, I kid you not, Miranda woke up laughing. When I brought her into bed, she fell asleep again with a smile on her face.
Natalie too has been working on staying in her room all night until morning (we implemented a sticker chart that has led to a 100% improvement). Since waking up to two smiling, happy girls in the morning is too precious to miss, we’re sticking with co-sleeping for those last couple of hours of the night. We often are rewarded on the weekends not only with waking up to happy smiles, but with kids who sleep until 10 am. I don’t want to jinx it, but at least for now, we’ve got the best of both worlds. And we got there by following the babies, not the experts.
What could be more natural than this “follow the baby” method! Seriously, you should write a book. It would be very short, though, I suppose! I think this is what we have done w/ Katie from the start (out of laziness, tho), and it has contributed to her “easiness” as a baby. Nice discovery, Amy (and Susan)!
This is a GREAT post, Amy. We’ve found the same rewards in following Ryan’s cues…though I am jealous of your 10AM weekends.
Funnily enough, I “planned” to take the approach you did (co-sleeping) but at about 10 months baby #1 refused to sleep when she was in bed with us — she just wanted to crawl and poke us. Same with #2 from much earlier. I still try every morning to get her to fall asleep a little longer in our bed, but nope.