I have a two-year-old and five-month old. I used the baby whisper approach with my first daughter. Due to my misunderstandings, I made some mistakes, but stuck with it, and we did finally get improvement with her sleep. When I had my son, I wanted to follow the approach right from the start, but realize now I made some mistakes. Here is the story with him. He was sleeping through the night (5 or more hours), but at 3 1/2 months he started night waking. The next day, he rolled over, so I thought that was why. Unfortunately, I began accidental parenting then at night. During the day, I thought I was doing right, I would lay him down awake and was following a 3 hour EASY to the best of my ability, but I was confused by his early waking from naps (30 -45 minute naps). I tried, sometimes with success but usually not, to get him back to sleep. Now, we have caused him to be unable to know how to get himself back to sleep. I am on day five of the BW approach to solve accidental parenting. 1st two days I observed. Here is our typical schedule now:
5:30 wake up - shh/pat if possible or PU/PD back to sleep - continue to 7:00
7:00 eat - he breastfeeds very quickly, so activity time starts early - 7:15ish.
8:40 quiet time in his bedroom (dim lights, books, quiet toys)
9:00 lay down in bed awake, if he cries, shh/patt works and he is usually asleep in minutes
He sleeps 40 minutes at the longest and we do shh/pat or pu/pd until the suggested times in the BW book. He usually sleeps 2 -3 30 minute naps solid and the rest of the time we are shh/patting...
The rest of the day is a repeat of above with 11:00 eat, 3:00 eat, 7:00 eat and 10 or 11 dream feed. The longest stretch he has done at night in his crib is 2.5 hours. sometimes he goes back to sleep quickly, other times it is 30 minutes of shh/pat, pu/pd for 7 - 10 minutes sleep. I do keep my hand on his chest and or shh/pat past the 20 minute mark, but sometimes we don't even make it there before he is crying again. Other potentially useful info: we have never done cry it out, he does eat rice cereal and has just started vegetables, we have tried sneaking in at 20/25 minutes and shh patting through the wake (seems to just start the wakeup process earlier). We do stills waddle him, but he often gets his hands out and wakes himself.
we have tried not swaddling one or both arms, but his hands seem to wake him. We know that we have more days to go and that it can get worse before it gets better, but we were up essentially from 3:30 AM til 7:00 shh/patting oevery 30 minutes.
Here are my questions: Can you see anything we are doing wrong or can improve on? Even thought he is laying down awake, he is not seeming to make progress going back to sleep. Any suggestions? Here is the progress we have seen. He is going to sleep MUCH quicker, he goes back to sleep when he wakes up with help (before it seemed help was no help). Thanks in advance.
Jennifer
