Advice for my 12 week old please!

[KellyC]

Hi

My DS Zander is 12 weeks old and is a great night sleeper (with the exception of last night - we think he has a little cold  :cry: ).  This week we have taken his dummy away and we're going really well with pat/shush which seems to work for him all of a sudden.  Of course my problem now is the consistent 40-45 minute naps.  He can also only seem to take an hour of wake-up time before he's cranky and desperate for sleep.  I read the thread about how Tracy helped Josie and it sounded very familiar so this afternoon I've given it a go - when he got cranky after an hour of being awake I took him upstairs and gave him a feed, read to him for a bit, sang him a song (why oh why can I only think of Christmas carols at the moment!!) and we made it to an hour and a half before I swaddled him and put him in his bed.  I then pat/shushed a bit and stayed with him until he'd passed the 20 minute jolt.  I went back in just before 40 minutes and sure enough he jolted and screamed and seemed like he was going to wake up but I was able to pat/shush him back to sleep and left him after 5-10 minutes.  So, a pretty good start but I have some questions;

I'm breastfeeding - how long is a 'light' feed, bearing in mind these are extra feeds in addition to his 3 hourly feeds? (I think 3 hours is still right for him, too early for a 4 hour routine).

How long should I stay with him if I'm able to rescue him at the 40 minute mark?  I left when he seemed settled but I was worried it was a little early and that he would wake again - so far so good though and he's had an hour and 10 minutes 

Why do I have to stay with him for 20 minutes for pat/shushing him to sleep, rescue his nap at 40 minutes but I don't need to go back in 20 minutes later when he's napped for an hour?  I did hear him make a sound on the monitor at the one hour point but he's still asleep.

Does anybody have any experience of when good sleeping habits in the baby's own bed transfer to the pram / car seat when you're out?  Like some of the others on this board I feel I'm destined to stay in the house with my LO as I can't deal with him when he's screaming his head off because he's tired and we're not at home (not without the dummy anyway and we've just got rid of that!).

Thanks
Kelly x

Mum to Zander James Textbook (with a little Touchy) baby!

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

Hi Kelly

I can't offer you any advice I'm afraid on extending naps as I was pretty crap at trying to do it  :oops:

What I'm posting for is, I hope you don't mind me asking but what has made you decide to take away DS dummy?

My dd has a dummy mainly to wind her down for her naps.  She sometimes needs it briefly at bedtime and other than that I always have one on hand when we are in Tesco! 

I've seen a few postings from other moms talking about weaning their LO's off dummies around this age (Mia is almost 15 weeks now) and I'm just wondering why other moms are doing it and whether I should be thinking about doing it.

To be honest I don't know how I would settle her for a nap without one.  She's textbook/spirited and patting sends her through the roof.  She seems to like shushing but I don't think that alone would settle her like her dummy does.

So I'm interested to hear whats prompted your decision to dummy wean....and how it's going.

Louise

[KellyC]

Hi Louise

I hadn't ever planned to use a dummy but bought a couple 'just in case' - but at 2am the night we brought Zander home I was in the kitchen sterilising dummies in boiling water!!  We found them a godsend during the first few weeks and we've been able to establish good feeding and sleeping patterns, particularly at night time as for some weeks now we've been able to put Zander down after his bath and not here from him all evening and I mean never!  I wanted to try and wean him from it at about 3 or 4 months as suggested in the BW books but also because I think it'll be easier whilst he's too young to understand that he has a dummy and he doesn't look for it himself.  I don't want him to have one when he's older just so I can shut him up when he's making a noise I don't want to hear!  I've tried to take it off him a couple of times before and it was a nightmare, both times I caved in as I just couldn't settle him.  All of a sudden in the last couple of weeks pat/shush seems to be having an effect on him and it started to get quicker to do this than it was to attempt to get the dummy in his mouth whilst he was screaming.  I think it was DH and I who relied on it and not him - whatever mummy can do to calm him down is fine with him!  He's definitely finding he's able to self-soothe a bit now and he likes to bury his head in the matress until he's asleep, he prefers this even to me holding him  - I pat/shush and eventually just pat whilst he's doing this and after the 20 minute jolt into deep sleep I turn him onto his back, very difficult without waking him up!  Zander was very good with his dummy at night and would go to sleep, spit it out and continue sleeping but I think some people spend half the night putting the dummy back in as their babies wake when it falls out.  I think this is why some people choose to take the dummy away.  Daytime naps were like this for us with the dummy and I seemed to spend all day shoving it in his mouth.

As to how it's going - really, really well until this evening!  My DH went out with one of our dogs to the vets at 6pm when Zander was due his pre-bath catnap and our other dog went absolutely mad yelping and howling.  Let's just say Zander out-yelled her!  By the time he'd been bathed and fed he'd been awake for 3 hours which is more than double his usual and he was absolutely inconsolable.  I gave him his dummy (partly for my sanity too as I felt I couldn't cope this evening) but will take it away once he's done with it this evening and go back to being without it tomorrow and if he wakes in the night.  I hope we're not back at square one!

Sorry this has been so long-winded.  If you're happy for your LO to have a dummy then don't worry about it, I just felt I wanted to deal with it now rather than later.  My 18 month old nephew has one and my sister is finding it extremely difficult to take his away!

Kelly x

[Meg's Mom]

**breastfeeding - how long is a 'light' feed, bearing in mind these are extra feeds in addition to his 3 hourly feeds? (I think 3 hours is still right for him, too early for a 4 hour routine). **
I started exactly as you are…what Deb/Tracy did w/ Joise.  I let her feed for 10-15 min but my LO took 40min to BF at normal feed times.  You can also go by how sleepy she is getting.  If too sleepily then stop and shorten a bit next time.

**how long should I stay with him if I'm able to rescue him at the 40 minute mark? I left when he seemed settled but I was worried it was a little early and that he would wake again - so far so good though and he's had an hour and 10 minutes.**
Sounds like you did fine, Tracy said 20min but you will be able to tell by trial and error.

Gotta run nap time over!
Hope that helps

[Taylor's Mommy]

Hi Kelly-to answer your question about sleeping in cot transfering to sleeping in the pram/carseat, for us it happened around 4 months of age.  Until then she was miserable and would always cry for at least 15 minutes in her carseat before finally going to sleep.

You may find though that eventhough he eventually will settle better in the carseat as he gets older he may not take a very good nap or a very long one, leading to a little crankiness later in the day.  That is our case at least, so I try to plan my day around her naps now which is tough sometimes, but at leat now we have a 2-3 hour window of opportunity as opposed to the 45 minutes before!

HTH!

[EmMUK74]

I just wanted to say - sounds like you have just been through what I had to do through with DD a week ago - you seem to have been successful much quicker than I was and I wanted to say well done. 

[KellyC]

Thanks everyone!

Last night was a bit of a nightmare and I gave him his dummy at bedtime, calmed him with pat/shush when he woke at midnight but went back to the dummy the next few times he woke in the night!  I think it was his arms/hands waking him up as we put him in a Grobag - back to swaddling tonight I think!

Today is going well - got him to take a 2 hour nap this morning and I'm about to go in to try and extend his second nap (although it sounds like he's stirring already, I hope I catch him!).  I'm forgetting the dummy incident last night and trying to get back on track today - my head hurts though, where can I summon up the energy and willpower to keep this up?!!

Kelly x