eat-play-sleep

Well, I didn't want to post about it until we'd really given it a real shot. See, we read the book On Becoming Babywise. It's kind of controversial, largely, from what I can gather, because it used to present the theory in the form of hardcore rules about when the baby is allowed to eat, sleep and play. Apparently it used to tell you that if your baby was screaming its head off in the middle of the night, even if he/she hadn't eaten in 7 hours that you absolutely were not allowed to feed them and that they had to cry it out. The version I have, the tone is pretty flexible, really, and it doesn't say anything about letting the baby cry it out unles I missed that part.

So, as you know, we decided to try it. We, at about 6 weeks, we got Cassidy on a flexible schedule where she would eat a full feeding, then stay awake for a little and then take a nap. The first thing we realized is that she was tired. We weren't letting her nap enough before - with the schedule, it helped us to see something we couldn't without it and that was that she needed much more sleep throughout the day than we were encouraging her to have. (She needs some help falling asleep, so she wouldn't just go to sleep on her own; instead, she cried.)

Almost immediately, she began to have a much more predictable schedule. She ate every 2.5-3 hours and stayed up for a little, then went down for a nap (we rock her or just hold her until she falls asleep) and she would nap until she woke up. She also very quickly started sleeping much better, and in much longer stretches at night.

Within a week, she was going to bed at 8pm, and sleeping until about 3am. She would wake up, eat and go right back to sleep. It has been over 5 weeks and she is still on that same schedule. She sleeps from 8pm-3 or 4am, eats and goes right back to sleep until 7 or 8am. She does fuss a little between 5am and 6am, but she doesn't cry or anything. She just grunts and whines for a little bit. It's just a matter of patting her and maybe putting her bink back in. This morning, she fussed for about 30 minutes from 5:30am-6 and then went back to sleep and she was still asleep at 8am.

The book would say that she should be sleeping through the night by now, but I actually don't agree that she should go from 8pm-8am with no food at this age and I think 1 middle of the night feeding is no big deal (especially since I'm not the one that does it, hahaha.)

So, I know that some people seem to feel that this book is controversial, but I just can't figure out why. We've never denied her food, we've never forced her to stay awake when she's been tired, we've never let her cry it out (except for a minute here and there and that's only because I'm in the bathroom or getting a bottle ready or something) and the book doesn't say those things. The book does talk about how the baby shouldn't be the center of your world, and on one hand, I see what they're saying, but on the other hand, I think it's fine to focus on the baby and prioritize them above all else. That's not why we went with the Babywise eat-play-sleep theory. We went with it because a number of people (who we can relate to and whose kids we really like) have used that book and recommend it. We were having issues and what we were doing wasn't working. So we tried this and it worked. Probably doesn't work for everyone. And you can probably easily go overboard with some of the stuff.

Currently, we are blessed with a very easy 3 month old. She eats well (more spit up lately but no reflux or anything.) She sleeps very well at night. I can get her to fall asleep for a nap in about 2 minutes when she is tired. She is really into riding in the car, likes the grocery store and other outings. She laughs and smiles so much, it makes me want to just eat her up! It was so hard at first, I thought we'd never make it. But we are in a phase right now where we are sailing smooth and I am sooo grateful.