3 month old daytime sleep patterns

manubhadauria did you email me for the pdf already? a few people have so I'm not sure if you are one of them. Let me know when you have as I don't like to leave my email address on here for too long you can remove your mail id i have just mailed you.

manubhadauria did you email me for the pdf already? a few people have so I'm not sure if you are one of them. Let me know when you have as I don't like to leave my email address on here for too long. how old is your baby by the way? Some newborns have real problems with getting overstimulated, too much awake time, too much handling, people shaking toys in front of their faces etc and find it really hard to calm down so they cry in order to clock it all out. You might find white noise really helps him calm (sometimes the sound of a hairdryer or vaccum cleaner is effective) and yes, sucking on the breast or dummy can be very soothing for them. If you have had family around he may have been awake far too much and passed around from person to person, away from mum too much. He might need some quiet time, close to mummies chest in a quiet darkened room with some white noise for 30 min or so before you try and put him down to sleep/nap and you might find he needs to nap much earlier than you have been trying.

The Dr Sears books are good too, there is a sleep book and a good behaviour book (and others). I also found the book "healthy sleep habits happy child" quite helpful. Its not an AP book at all and the author is actually very pro CIO (and has a strong disliek for Dr Sears) but he also allows for parents who choose to co-sleep and soothe their children. His focus is on developing natural sleep/nap/awake times based on circadian rhythms, and he gives advice on choosing the right times for your child to nap and go to bed. In his mind how/when you feed your baby is irrelevant to sleep. I would say his book is a very long, humourless dry read, but the info is somewhat useful if you want to have scheduled naps. I fyou don't want ot bother reading the book, the single biggest point he makes is tht children do better with EARLY bedtimes, even as early as 5pm for some and around 6pm for most. He is very anti the idea of a nap at around the 5pm mark.

sorry to hijack your thread sparkly... can you mail me too kiwispiers? can you recommend some more. i want to go to kinokuniya and get some books <em>edited by manubhadauria on 07/06/2012</em>

kiwispeirs you are really insightfull :) My DS loved swaddling but from 3 week onwards he started kicking and the swaddle would fell apart so i introduced grobags and he loves sleeping in that. from past 2 weeks his playtime is from 11-2 am! then takes a feed and goes to sleep like a angel. but i have been trying to bring his sleep time little by little and finally yesterday he slept at 12. (but still wanted to talk to me :) ) my main problem is his cry. i can't pacify him when he cries. he cries with his eyes tightly shut and whatever i do, play music,sing,rock him he continues to cry. my last option is to feed him and he stops crying. its not that he is hungry(getting feed just few minutes back) ( same thing day and night) even when i go out he is just inconsolable! i just want to calm him down but i guess i have to wait for some time more. my Mil and mom were both here so he was with me for feeds only. few days back i was in dubai mall and it took me some time to reach the feeding room.by that time he was at his loudest and was angry with me :) oohh the joys of motherhood :)

Once BFing was well established and I was happy with weight gain etc, rather than the boob I would offer the dummy first in the night, and if he didn't resettle, or woke up again soon after then I would assume it was hunger and give a feed instead. There is nothing "wrong" with letting your baby pacify themselves on your breast, its entirely natural infant behavior but at the same time, from a convenience point of view a dummy addiction is the lesser of two evils, in the sense that if you are not there someone else can do it. I think in our case if I had taken the dummy away I would have ended up feeding to sleep instead, and the dummy was certainly easier for me but it would have been nice not to need it at all. Glad my story is reassuring to you, I like to to post it as a way to show that there are many ways to mother, and you do not need to be scared into thinking you HAVE to sleep train in order for your baby to develop self-soothing skills, or feeling that there is anything harmful in helping your baby sleep. AP parenting is very much about creating a platform for independence and it certainly has been worth it for us.

Sparkly, if you send me an email at emma (at) collective (dot) net (dot) nz I will email you a book "the no cry sleep solution" as PDF which is basically THE sleep book for AP parents. Even if you were a sleep training mummy, it would be far to early to do so, research or CIO is based on babies over 6 months of age. Most babies start forming predictable nap times from about the 4 month point. From my experience (I am an AP parent and never sleep trained or ever refused to nurse), my biggest obstacle was the dummy. It was a great sleep cue along with swaddling but when we stopped swaddling (at 5 months, rather suddenly as he started to be able to roll over even while in the swaddle) he would knock the dummy out but be too young to put it back in and would wake for it. it was only once he could put it back in himself at around 9 months that I stopped having to get up multiple times a night to replace it. There are tips in the no-cry book on how to wean a baby off the dummy but tbh the technique didn't work for me and he still has one. Yes he did eventually self-soothe, probably from around the 12 month mark which is actually average. He did not sleep a solid 12 hours consistently until he was 14 months at which point he nightweaned of his own accord and continued to BF by day until a few weeks ago (he is 22 months and I am 23 weeks pregnant). I would say if you can avoid falling to sleep on the breast, and try and cuddle before sleep, but not let her fall asleep while still in your arms you will run into less issues. Better to feed, cuddle and then gently pat her off to sleep in her crib if that works. You can also try using white noise as a sleep cue. I would really try and use the dummy as part of the wind down routine but take it away before you put her in bed. I am going to try this with my next baby in the hope we won't have the same dependency develop. I can't remember exactly but I think at around 4 months my baby had 4 naps per day, all of which would only be 45 minutes unless I resettled. After a while I stopped bothering to resettle and just went with the 45 min naps, they lasted until he dropped to 2 naps, at which point they magically became 2 90 minute naps (with no resettling) and then when he dropped to one nap (at 12 months) this became and remains a 3-4 hour nap. At night at 3-4 months my baby slept an 8-9 hour stretch at night from 7-3amish and then woke for a feed at 3 and again at 5. I tried and tried to introduce a "dreamfeed" but it never worked, he would not wake up to feed and even if he did, he still woke at 3. At 5 months though he started waking frequently through the night (the dummy issue) and this gradually tapered out until by 12 months he woke once or twice, purely for feeds. If I could do it all again I'm not sure I would change a thing, maybe I wouldn't give the dummy but in so many ways the dummy has been great for sleep, probably I would have tried to use a white noise machine as a sleep cue and to have fastened the dummy to a soft blanket to make it easier for him to find and replace it from a younger age, I was in constant denial that I was going to take it away, but truthfully, I'm just not ok with my baby crying and the dummy made him happy. I'm pleased I never sleep trained, these days my toddler actually sleeps better than any of his sleep-trained friends, he asks to go for his nap and happily climbs into his own bed with a smile, lies down and goes to sleep without any more than a "good night sweetheart" from me. CIO does work for some mums, but it was not an option for me and I know other mums who have used it and it made no difference at all, except to make their baby fearful of bed. You have to do what feels right for you and figure out together with your baby the best way forward. Enjoy the co-sleeping, I loved co-sleeping with my baby but at around the 9-10 month mark it stopped working and he started wanted to sleep on my face and play in the night. I have such lovely memories though of him lying next to me, hearing him breath and the two of us alone together feeding quietly at night. It can feel a long time, but when you look back, they grow up in a flash and those moments are gone. take care xx PS totally hear you on having MIL and mum at same time, I had them both staying when my guy was 6 weeks, my mum is a total AP mum though and my MIL is more or less a carbon copy of Gina ford so they kind of cancelled each other out, there were some awkward moments to be sure.

Sounds like my DD at 7 months I also need to re settle - for me its by breatfeeding cos anything else will just wake her up fully .... i'm eager to hear other mums expirience Hiya! I have both my mum and mother in law here with me this month, and I am a little self conscious of what they think about my LO daytime sleep patterns as they take care of her while I work. I am okay with the 'routine' and trust that it will work out over time but it makes me wonder what a typical 3 month old might be sleeping like and how closely we are following this. Basically we are up at 6am and then nap for 45 mins at 6:30 or 7am. This is mostly just a feed and a very quick play in bed together (we co-sleep in the mornings from around 3 am). Up at 7:30 then sleep at 9 for 2-3 hours but resettle every 45 minutes. Up at 1 then sleep at 2:30 for two hours with 45 minute resettles. Then catnap at 5 or 5:30. Bed by anytime between 6:30 to 7:30, aiming for 7pm. We're breastfeeding. I think the pattern is not too bad but the resettling is the real issue. Neither mum or MIL mention this happening to them when they had kids but I have spoken to many mums who experience the same. I do cuddle bubs to sleep a lot and she often has a dummy (to my dislike) to settle, I usually put her in her cot while sleepy but awake. I don't have the heart to put her in while wide awake as some books suggest, and I don't believe in crying it out, extinction, and some variants of sleep training. I have been following an attachment parenting style and feel good about it but my doubts are with this resettling issue. Important to know that she sleeps stretches at night of up to 5/6 hours and sometimes 3 or 4 hours. So I guess it would be great to know other experiences and secondly, if I continue this way will she learn to self settle in time? TIA x