Follow-Up to waking in the middle of the night

In the comments of the previous post, Dee said she was having problems with her 5 1/2-month-old, because she was waking like a fool whenever she wasn't swaddled. And won't even fall back asleep in the middle of the night when swaddled. She says:

But she will go right back to sleep in the swing at that point without crying so most nights that's where she goes once she wakes. Once there, she'll stay asleep until we...wake...her...up...the next morning (payback and all--sister loves to get her some sleep, just like her daddy). She didn't used to do this, and slept through the night--in her crib--like a champ.

At this point, I have to wonder, will she be sleeping in that damn swing until she's two? 'Cause it's the only place that she'll go back to sleep in once she wakes up in the crib. And am I doing her harm by putting her back to sleep in the swing almost every night (probably 5 or 6 nights a week)?

Eventually she'll grow out of the swing, so the answer to whether she'll be there when she's two is an unqualified "no." The motor of the swing will probably burn out before then.:)

And what do you mean by "harm"? Do you mean that you might be creating bad sleep habits? I don't really believe in that. I mean, if you had to switch shifts at work and needed to start sleeping at completely different times of the day, you'd be able to do it, even if it sucked for the first week or so, and you're a full-grown adult. So I just don't believe that a baby can't learn to sleep different ways, as long as no one expects it to be easy and happen in only one night. I think the "don't create bad sleep habits" thing is just another scare tactic.

Now, I guess it's possible that you could be doing some harm to the spinal cord by having her sleep in the swing, but I kind of doubt that, too. Humans are pretty flexible and adaptable. If she's getting plenty of tummy time during the day, I say do what you need to to get her to sleep at night. In another 4 weeks she'll be doing something completely different anyway.

Also, read the comments from Kate and wix, and see if anything triggers for you. If she changed her sleep habits all of a sudden, it could be from something that changed in her environment, or it could just be because she's a baby.

Sherry: Most baby books will have general info about physical spurts, but great info about developmental leaps is in the book The Wonder Weeks by Hetty Vanderijt and Frans Plooij. (They have freaky names because they're Dutch.) The book talks about when the big developmental leaps happen in the first year so you can figure out why a good sleeper suddenly won't sleep, or a good eater won't eat for a few days, etc. It also tells you what they're learning, and how you can help them. I love this book and can't recommend it enough.

Comments

[Dee]

Sigh...I heart you.

Thank you so much for the reassurance. And yes, the "harm" in question was to her sleeping habits, not her body.

Slowly but surely, I'm sure she'll get there...I'm starting to grasp that the concept of 'one step forward, two steps back' is gonna happen at times. She's rounding the corner to six months so it could be a growth or developmental spurt (and The Wonder Weeks is a great book--thanks for the recommendation of it a few months back).

[Menita]

You know, when I run across moments like these with Polly, I think: what are the odds she'll be doing this by the time she's 18? If they're on the low side, I say "whatever" and let her carry on. It was happening with her solids eating. Man was she messy for the first two months. Grandma and aunt were horrified.
Now she's a champ, with no prompting - she just moved on.
I don't know, the 18-year rule helps me to deal with some thigns (of course sleeping I think is one of the worst battlegrounds). Unless the kid's hurting herself, then, whatever.
Hope she gets the hang of it soon, Dee!

[wix]

to chime in again on the issue of sleep, last night we had a tough time getting CX to actually fall asleep. very unusual, and we couldn't identify any new culprits, though eventually the thought that he was hungry came to me like a bolt of lightning. NC had fed him his supper early, and he was going to bed later than usual (we don't have a super-strict bedtime, so that wasn't really out of the ordinary). sure enough, tonight we gave him a just-before-bath snack, WFM string cheese, and a glass of milk (which he loves), and he was asleep within 3 minutes of lying down.