Ok, I have a perfect child! I shouldn´t brag about that so openly, since it can chance by the day. But for now, Mika is perfect! If you would have asked me about him two days ago, my answer would have been very different!
Last week it all looked fine, except for the sleeping part. Like I wrote, he didn´t want to fall asleep in his own crib. And in the last days of that week it really got worse. Half of the days and nights I was busy to get him to sleep, by rocking him in my arms and putting back his pacifier. Since Marc had told me he had a hard time handling him when he´s crying that loud and since I didn´t want Lara to wake up during the night, I took all responsibility for getting and keeping him quiet. Let me tell you, by Saturday I was totally worn out…
At Saturday night we talked about it and came to the conclusion that we had to change some things. For one thing: Mika didn´t seem to be satisfied with the amount of feeding we gave him. Often he woke up about two hours after the feeding screaming for more. The other thing was the sleeping-thing: we´d gotten Lara on a sleepingschedule simply by just letting her cry a bit before she fell asleep on her own. So we had to try that on Mika too.
So two things we changed: at Saturday night we put him to bed and let him cry. He cried for an hour! (now don´t start yelling at me for being a bad mom, let me finish my story!) After that hour we got him out of bed, fed him with a bit more than usual and by the first signs of tiredness put him back to bed at 11.45pm. And here comes the miracle:
He didn´t cry (too tired yet after crying for an hour!), fell asleep and slept till 8.30am!!!
The rest of the day he kept his own schedule of waking up, eating, being awake for a bit and when getting sleepy after about an hour, we put him back to bed again. He slept for about 3 hours then. Sometimes he cried for about 10 minutes, but often he fell asleep quietly. And this morning he slept again till 8.15am!
What 3 ½ week old child gives his parents a night rest of 8 hours?! Two nights in a row?!
He´s now well fed and well rested. A perfect, happy and satisfied child… (as are his parents)
PS: he´s also falling asleep without pacifier! Hurray! I hate those things, since little babies don´t keep ´em in their mouth and since older children have hard times learning to live without it.
1 opmerking:
Good for you! I was pretty good about doing Ethan that way when he was a baby and he was an easy baby. With Wyatt, I gave in more to the crying, fed him more, and just held him more in general and he was a very difficult baby. It may have just been a difference in temperaments, but I wonder if he would have been different if I had let him cry more in the early days. He did not sleep consistently through the night until he was about three. So, you can see why I don't have any more kids!
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