night time experiments

When Rohan came home from the hospital, he was getting up every 2 hours or so, feeding for about 10-15, and then soothed to bed for another 10 - 15. Thus leaving his parents (more his mom) with nice 1.5 hour sleep breaks -- at most....Well, things have improved -- a little bit.

We have started to make a conscious effort to improve his sleeping habits. Though he is still below the 11 lbs. magic number (the What to Expect the First Year postulation that an 11 lbs. baby can withstand an 8 hour stretch without feeding), we are trying to stretch out the time between feedings.

Initially, whenever Rohan awoke in the middle of the night, we assumed it was to feed. Turns out that many times he wakes up just to look around, grunt and snort a little, then fall back to sleep. So we let him wake up and figure out what he wants now -- provided he's not crying. Just before he starts crying we'll get him out of the cradle to feed. This alone has stretched the feeding intervals to 3 - 4 hours. A couple of those and you actually get a decent night of sleep.

We're also encouraging Rohan to start sleeping on his own. Though this has proved to be less successful than the above, it is slowly starting to work. A clear difference in opinion exists between Dr. Sears (Attachment Parenting - pretty much the Indian way of doing things) and virtually everyone else. Dr. Sears and most Indian parents would prefer that you rock, soothe, carry the baby to sleep every night in your arms and then put them in their cradle / crib. Which we've been doing for the last 9 weeks or so.

But an amazing thing happened one night around week 6. Rohan was lying on our bed, keeping himself occupied and then just fell asleep on his own. To me, it makes sense that babies learn to do it at some point -- it seems to me that it would calm them a bit when they wake in the middle of the night and don't see the parent that put them to bed. Nevertheless, it doesn't work all the time or even most of the time.

Sneaky baby that Rohan is becoming, when deposited in his cradle before he wants to sleep - he just amps up his whimpering once he's in the cradle till he's picked up. It is pretty hard to ignore him as he is on the edge of crying and there might be something wrong....However, usually 8 seconds after being picked up, he falls asleep in our arms. Back in the cradle he goes.....