3 months and no sign of STTN - pls help!

[anna*]

I think people just feel the need to say something, and with babies, 'is he/she sleeping through yet' is as ubiquitous as 'have you planned a vacation for this year' as small-talk. If you don't give them an 'opening', you save them from putting their foot in it, or saying something that isn't your business - and save yourself from having someone (usually clueless) make you feel bad about your parenting choices!! Win win!   

[b0nni3]

The other routine was great at first becuase it literally felt like an instruction manual. But the result is I've actually started to think pretty negatively about him, get cross with him for not doing what he should be doing and have not felt very confident about my own abilities at all.

I completely agree with you about this; a lot of times the tone of baby books (all the "should's") make you feel like a failure when your baby doesn't conform. It's really hard. I know that when I was (and when I still get) fixated on baby books that I only see who my baby "is not" rather than who my baby "is". And don't we, as adults, hate that? I mean, the worse fights I have with my DH (or with my parents) is when they don't want to see me as who I am, and expect me to be someone/something else.

Natasha, I also waivered between BW and the "other" routine (I think we all know which one it is) and despite my (selfish) desire for my LO to conform to the "other" routine, it was just way unrealistic. I have a friend with two boys who thrived on that other routine, however, so it really does boil down to the baby's needs. I know, looking at the other routine, that my LO could not possibly manage those stretches of time being awake. Also, my friend whose two boys are on that routine said her second baby (now around 5 months old?) is still on the 6-8 week schedule...so even for someone who is liking the other routine, their baby still didn't do it perfectly.

Everything that has been said on this thread resonated with me 100%. Everyone wants their bub to STTN - for our own mental health's sake! - but it just doesn't really happen for everyone all the time. For about 2 weeks in Dec and early Jan my LO was doing a stretch of sleep from 10/11pm to 4/5am - bliss for me! - and then this week he just decided to abandon it and for the past 5 nights have woken up at least 4-5 times per night. Can't figure out why - probably OT but despite our best efforts to gete him to nap sometimes it just doesn't work out. Sometimes there isn't a clear reason. I keep thinking if I tweak this or do that or control this or fix that then it will change. But sometimes it just doesn't, and you just have to wait it out (which I really hate but a learning to do, slowly.) I also find it hard that everyday is different - no sense of continuity. But my therapist (by the way, no shame in seeing one - it has helped me keep things in perspective and I'm a huge fan of help-seeking behaviour!) has said that we have much to learn from children because we are not used to being patient and "waiting things out" anymore. He also said that parenting is a faith journey because you never know for certain what will come next - will the LO SSTN or will he or she have multiple NWs? You just don't know, but you have to go on!

Our parents' and more so our grandparents' generations didn't rely on these baby books - yet they obviously managed to raise healthy babies/children! (And they had more kids back in those days than we do these days...I am just amazed by how my grandmother who only went to grade school managed to raise 5 kids and 2 grandkids - myself included).

My DH has a theory that baby books are a little bit like "parenting by horoscope". There is just enough truth in just about everything that makes you think anything that happens fits into a category of some sort. Baby doesn't sleep at night - maybe he's sleeping too much in the day. baby doesn't sleep at night - maybe he's not napping enough. Baby doesn't nap well - maybe he's OT or over stimulated. Baby doesn't nap well - maybe he's UT. The same problem, two completely opposite explanations. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, books can only say so much. (I'm still learning this lesson! I'm an academic so I thrive on books/theories/reading, and being a parent is like using a completely different part of my brain that doesn't usually get used.)

One more thing - there's study that shows that post-natal depression (or rather, depression during the first year of parenting!) is associated with lack of sleep - mothers who don't sleep well are more likely to be depressed than mothers who do sleep well. So what we've tried to do is just to maximize my sleep - even if sometimes it means doing a bit of accidental parenting or letting the bub grunt and moan and whimper in the night without going to him (after checking, of course, that everything is ok). I know that when I sleep, I feel SO much better about my LO.

Good luck!

[natashacs]

What a nice message Bonnie!!!! That's interesting about your friend too, i could say my LO was doing the 'other' (mentioning no names) routine pretty much perfectly if I was thinking about the 6 - 8 week part of it. The 3 to 4 month part of it though, there is not enough daytime sleep in it and no way he can stay awake long enough. I now do the other routine (because it is ingrained in my head and it fits in with things like me having to have a Monday meeting with the girls who work for me between 12 and 2) - but with the attitude of the BW, ie he has more sleeps and I don't freak out so much about certain things or take such a firm line on things.
Your DH is reallyright about the parenting by horoscope thing, there is so much conflicting advice, but it all helps you feel as though you have - or at least could get - the siutation under control. I was reading through my notebook of what DS does each day(yes I am sad I know) and I realised that I spend every day feeding him up in the hope he'll STTN and he averages 30 - 32oz a day. Yet on the night he did sleep through, he'd only had 25oz. Which blew my theory that he'll never sleep through unless he hits 32oz or more right out of the water!!!!

How old is your LO by the way?

[b0nni3]

Hey Natasha, my LO turns 11 weeks tomorrow. I know what you mean about feeding the LO lots in the hopes that they will STTN. I BF exclusively so there's no way of knowing how much he eats, but I have found zero correlation between how long he nurses for during the day and how well he sleeps at night. So, out goes that theory!

I too hope somehow that my LO will do a long nap at some point during the day so that I can go back to my studies (I'm doing a graduate degree - on leave but really needing to get back to a bit of work, or else I will never ever finish!).

The one thing I find difficult with BW is that it really tells you to watch your LO's cues and respect them, but sometimes those cues don't follow the routine! For example, my LO doesn't need to be fed every 3 hours but his A time only fits in a 3 hourly EASY. So do I feed my LO every 3 hours even though I know he doesn't need it (thereby pretty much "making him" eat when he's not hungry...which to me isn't that respectful, shoving a boob in his face when he doesn't need it!)? Also do I wake him up to feed him just to conform to a 3 hourly EASY? It seems sort of rude to interrupt his sleep (he's big enough not to need to be woken up to eat) for the sake of a schedule. So, I wrestle with these questions with BW.

Anyways, my hope is that at some point, _some_ kind of routine emerges - whether it looks like BW or not - and that I can have a slightly better sense of how a day looks.

[clazzat]

Hi Bonnie - Just wanted to say that I had a similar problem with my lo (she's 21 weeks now) about not quite fitting into the BW schedule - I didn't want to feed her when she wasn't hungry, and she had a real problem with her A times as they were very short.  I did find that with a bit of perseverance a routine emerged - I tried to follow where I could and adapt where I couldn't.  On our good days she now sleeps for 1.5 hours in the morning, 2 hours at lunchtime and a short nap in the afternoon - I'm not sure I would say that this emerged completely on its own as my toddler sleeps 2 hours at lunchtime and I wanted it to fit in with that, but it did happen with less effort than I thought it would.

Hope it works itself out for you soon.
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