祝７時間 Seven hours!

Finally achieved the seven hours of sleeping! We have been following the method of the book called “Contended Little Baby” which provides schedules of babies week by week. It’s quite rigid and doesn’t work always, but I find it useful that it gives certain structures to the day.

Now TR (baby’s initial) days are something like this (at least what we strive for):

7:00 wake up and meal, followed by play time
9:00- 10:00 Morning nap
10:00 Meal, followed by play time
12:00- 14:00 Lunch time nap
14:00 Meal (trying to delay it as much as I can) and play another 30 mins nap in-between
17:00 Bath and meal
18:00 Getting ready for sleep
19:00 – 22:00 Sleep
22:00- 23:00 Meal
23:00- 7:00 Sleep

He may have one additional meal time if he is too hungry before the bath time. The timing of each schedule varies from day to day of course. We are not always home to follow the same schedule either. We just used it as a guide as to how often to feed and when he gets tired and needs a nap. We also time our outing with his nap time, since he falls sleep when he is in a sling. It’s useful in a way that it is easier to tell what the TR wants when he cries.

The other night TR went to bed at midnight and woke up at seven. He even smiled at me instead of crying to tell me that he was hungry. I was so impressed! The unfortunate thing is that I didn’t get to enjoy the long night sleep as I had food poisoning and up a few times that night…

The key is he eats well during the last feeding. For him to eat vigorously he has to have a good evening sleep to be awake during the last meal time. So, naturally each routine of the day has a domino effect of how well he eats and sleeps, which leads to determining the quality of nighttime sleep. It’s good that we now know he is capable to sleep through if he eats well. We will continue with this to stretch it eventually from 8 to 7.

The next challenge is to let him sleep without ricking him every time. This is much more difficult…  I really dread it.