HELP!!! 7 week old DD HATES the car

[Erin M]

Hey Shannon, glad to hear your trip went well!  I listened to the soundtrack to the movie "Garden State" all the time when I was PG and it worked really well to soothe Katie when she was small, I'm sure they remember hearing it before they were born

Just to throw my two cents in, I think the whole waking thing depends a whole lot on your LO.  I've only woken Katie up in the morning a handful of times in her entire life (when we've had to be somewhere) and she's generally been a good nighttime sleeper and napper -- she's very easygoing though, so that helps.  Sounds like you're doing a great job, I got very hung up on Katie's eating and sleeping when she was tiny and it made me miserable -- things got better when I eased up a bit. 

[Sungrl]

riuliani and Stacy - thanks for the info about sleep training; makes sense.  Zoey is going to bed pretty easily around 8:30pm these days and waking around 7:30am.  She does have at least one nap of 1.5 - 2 hours in the morning and often the rest are 40 minutes long.  She is usually only awake for a max of 1 hour before she needs another nap.  I would like her naps to be longer, but I'm not desperate by any means at this point so I'm not going to resort to alarm clocks or anything.  If she wakes from a 40 minute nap and is fussy or upset, I normally just get her back down to sleep as soon as I can.  If Zoey is not sleeping through the night in a few months perhaps I will look more into sleep training at this then.  Zoey is still only 8 weeks old and she does take medication that could very well affect her sleeping, so at least until she is off the medication I am not going to worry too much about her sleeping habits. 

Erin - I have also found I've been worrying a bit too much about Zoey's sleeping... and crying.  She slept so much and cried so little for the first 6 weeks of her life, I got spoiled and freaked out when she suddenly would have crying meltdowns or take really short naps.  The truth is that when I think about it, Zoey may have always taken 40 minute naps... I just might not have noticed.  I used to have her napping in her Moses basket or Papasan chair in the living room all the time, but then I got hung up on self soothing and started putting her in her crib for every nap and that seems to be when the 40 minute naps started...or at least when I noticed them.  I really want her to be able to nap anywhere (at my mom's or friend's houses) and now I'm worried I'm going to ruin that by putting her in her crib for every nap. 

I also have to put Zoey in her bassinet in our room every other weekend because we have my 3 year old stepdaughter sleeping over and she sleeps in the nursery (we have only one spare room).  After I moved her to her crib, I did notice it was harder to get her to sleep and stay asleep in the bassinet.  I'm not sure what to do about this...  Any ideas??

Shannon

[Sungrl]

Stacy, my stepdaughter is 3 and there is no way she would sleep in our room on the floor and the living room isn't practical because she goes to bed so early and my older step daughter is here also and we cannot expect everyone to go to bed at 8pm!  She has to be in her own room and Zoey's is the only one we have.  My step daughter has been sleeping over (moving back and forth) regularly since she was under a year old and is a very well adjusted child as a result.  Zoey is going to have to get used to moving back and forth weekly until we move to a bigger house, we just have no choice.  I had planned to put her in a playpen once she outgrew the basinette (my step daughter has slept in one here all along).

Shannon

[Sungrl]

I suppose we could try the playpen now, she just seems so tiny to go in there!    She was sleeping in the basinette next to me up until last week...

They may eventually share the room but we are just getting everyone adjusted right now and it wouldn't work to have them together.  My step daughter wakes at 6am sharp and little Zoey sleeps until 7:30 or 8:00am and is still waking (twice at the moment) for feeds in the night so it wouldn't work to have them together...they would wake each other up.