[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

This sounds great, thank you 🙂

Best,

Györgyi

[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

Yes, his morning wake time is 7 am. He is often woken up at 7 am or wakes up by himself around 6:45. Unfortunately, there are also times when he wakes up around 5:30 am and I can’t settle him back to sleep – if this is the case, then he usually has 3 naps during the day without any problems.

If he wakes up around 7 am, his first nap starts between 9:15 and 9:45 am. It lasts 30-45 minutes. The second nap starts between 12:15 and 13:15 pm. Its length is not really predictable, only that it is longer than his morning nap and it may even last 3 hours. If it starts early, he may wake up around 2 pm which is unfortunate because his third nap routine would start around 4:30 pm, but then he wouldn’t have enough awake time before bedtime. If he wakes up around 3 pm, then we start the bedtime routine at 6:30 pm and he had only two naps that day.

The bedtime routine starts between 6:30 and 7 pm, depending on when his last nap ended.

We follow the wake-feed-play routine. Roughly two hours after he woke up, he starts being fussy and then I put him in the baby carrier and take a walk with him, staying near our flat. When he starts yawning and squirming in the baby carrier, I take him back to the flat and start the nap routine. This way when he falls asleep, sometimes 2 hours 45 minutes have passed since he woke up.

Best,

Györgyi

[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

Many thanks for your answer! We will follow your recommendations.

Just one quick comment – I wasn’t clear enough last time – it is the nap routine which lasts a maximum of 10 minutes, at the end of the routine I leave him in the crib and continue to monitor him on the screen of the baby monitor while doing housework. His naps can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours. So the situation is better than my latest post indicated 🙂

There is one more thing on which we would like to ask for your help. His wake window is roughly 2 and a half hours, by the time he falls asleep sometimes 2 hours 45 minutes have already passed since he woke up. Nowadays he usually has a shorter nap in the morning and a longer nap in the early afternoon. Unfortunately he often wakes up from his second nap around 2 pm – meaning that can’t have a third nap because if he has, by the time he would fall asleep, we would have to wake him up, but the earliest start of the bedtime routine is half past six, meaning that he has to be awake 4 and a half hours, which is too long for him. We considered starting the bedtime routine later, allowing time for a third nap, but once he has fallen asleep in the evening, he sleeps until 7 in the morning (with two wakings, probably because of hunger) and a later start would mean less sleep during the night.

As the rocking motion lulls him to sleep in the baby carrier, we sometimes allow for a short third nap in it. But as we cannot exactly predict when he would fall asleep in it, he often falls asleep too late, and either the bedtime routine has to start later or he resists falling asleep after the usual start of the bedtime routine.

Do you have any suggestions?

Best,

Györgyi

[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

As our 3-month access to the forums will soon expire, I would like to once again check in with you to make sure that what we do now will lead to adequate rest and healthy sleeping habits in the long run. I have three main questions: the settling pyramid which we modified, night wakings and baby pooping habits. If you remember, our original problem was that our baby did all his napping on me while breastfeeding – fortunately this is no longer the case, we now have nap routine and bedtime routine and we can expect our baby to sleep in his crib, giving us some much needed respite and opportunity to do housework. Our baby is now 5 months old, he is healthy, his development is promising, he can now roll both from back to tummy and from tummy to back.

1) He is still being breastfed to sleep most of the time. When following your advice we started the settling pyramid, we found that we often cannot settle him in our arms – so we put breastfeeding on top of the pyramid, and most of the time we still need to go to the top. There are few exceptions, but in the majority of the cases breastfeeding is still necessary. Do you have any advice how we could change that?

Right now what I do is that I start the routine and if rocking is not enough, I breastfeed him, when I notice him drifting off to sleep, I unlatch him – if he objects and looks for my breast, I let him feed again and unlatch him again later. After unlatching him successfully, I pick him up and put him in his crib, during this time he moves his arms and legs sleepily and gives cute sounds. I place him on his back and he immediately rolls onto his side – this is how he sleeps most of the time. Sometimes he sucks on his thumb, this is how he settles himself to sleep (but it does not always work – if this is the case, I continue with the pyramid with breastfeeding being on top). I leave the room quietly and monitor him on the screen of the baby monitor while doing something else, for example housework. Even with breastfeeding, the nap routine lasts a maximum of 10 minutes.

There is the option to unlatch him earlier and try rocking him again, but as the movement of being put into the crib wakes him, I was hoping that this was enough for him to learn, but I fear that I was wrong.

2) I would like to keep night wakings to the necessary minimum – I know that it is unrealistic to expect a baby to sleep through the night. We start the bedtime routine at 6:30 or 7 pm., depending on when his last nap ended and he is usually asleep by 7:30 or 8 pm. On average we have two wakings each night, one around midnight and one around 4 o’clock. If he does not wake up by himself, then we wake him at 7 am. I am aware that wakings during the night can have various reasons – for example if the baby is woken up by hunger, then there is nothing we can do to prevent it and I need to feed him. If something else wakes him, the skill to soothe himself back to sleep helps and he can gain this skill through the settling pyramid. Other than that, we have to make sure that he is comfortable (dressed appropriately for the temperature, has no discomfort – for example teething pain or illness can cause trouble sleeping) Is there anything more we can do?

For the record, at 2 months of age he started sleeping longer stretches, once even sleeping from 8 pm to 6 am without interruption. Then, at 2 and a half months of age teething started and the night wakings returned and they are still with us.

3) In your video you say that after some time babies stop pooping during the night. A Google search told me that usually by 4 month of age babies stop pooping during the night. Well, our baby still does that – I admit, less than before and there has been few poop-free nights (which were wonderful), but most of the time he still poops. Is there anything we can do to prevent it?

We now follow the wake-feed-play routine you recommended, and during the day pooping is mostly after waking up and feeding, but can happen during playtime as well. So he has plenty of opportunities to poop during the day.

Do you have any advice for us?

Best,

Györgyi

[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

This sounds great, we will try!

Thank you!

Györgyi

[Györgyi Szirákiné Kovács]

Dear Emma,

Thank you for your quick reply!

To answer your questions:

1. No, I haven’t – he wakes up by himself between 6 and 8 a.m. I aim to wait until he wakes up between 7 and 8 a.m., then I take him to the living room and put him on his playmat (also feeding and changing diapers depending on when he last woke up during the night). If his last waking is close to wake-up time, then it is difficult to help him fall asleep again and after 6 a.m. I usually don’t succeed and decide for him to get up – if this is the case, he usually has a longer nap later in the morning.

2. No, so far I couldn’t follow the wake-feed-play-sleep routine. It is more like play-feed-play-feed, with an attempt to put him to sleep after feeding (when he is relaxed and drowsy), which is either successful or not. When he feeds, he usually relaxes and slows down, sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes even an hour, and we suspect that he uses this to rest instead of napping.

In the first month, he spent a lot of time nursing, there were days when he literally didn’t do anything else. My husband brought food to me on a plate and fed me while I was feeding our son. We were joking that he had permanent growth spurt. But there were days when he could sleep between feedings, then I just put him down after feeding, and he slept. In the second month, he started to have more time between feedings, even two-three hours, and this is when it became obvious that helping him have naps during the day is important. Then teething came, and he wanted to nurse more often. Now teething is over and he don’t have a routine for naps, and he wants to feed every 90 minutes.

3. It varies how many naps he has during the day. The length varies from half an hour to two hours. Sometimes he has only one nap, sometimes three.

4. No, I don’t have a nap routine besides nursing or rocking. Occasionally he falls asleep by himself, but that is very rare and it has always happened without me organizing it. If he is sleepy and is left alone, but knows that I am nearby (I walk in and out of the living room, talking to him, doing housework), he falls asleep on the playmat.

5. We bought a pacifier and gave it to him twice in the first month, but he spat it out. We haven’t tried again.

6. We used to start the bedtime routine at 7:30 p.m., but when the teething started, we usually started it earlier (as he slept very little during the day and was fussy and crying in the evening), at 6:30 or 7 p.m. He usually falls asleep by 8 p.m.

7. The bedtime routine starts on the changing table. I undress him and take off his diaper while my husband prepares his bath and draws the blinds down in his bedroom. We have a lightbulb with red light which creates semidarkness. Then my husband takes him to the bathroom and bathes him, all the while talking to and joking with him. Then I dry him with his towel, and my husband dresses him for the night. He is brought straight to the bedroom. He is given one last feed and he used to fall asleep feeding. Since the teething, after placing him in his crib, I sometimes have to pick him up to rock him to sleep.

8. No, we never used a swaddle. At one month, he was able to roll from his stomach to his back (he was born with strong muscles and was able to raise his head and look around during tummy time from the beginning, and when he leaned to the side, he sometimes toppled over). Since then, he gained weight rapidly and he can no longer roll, but he is close, so we did not consider swaddling him. Besides, it is warm in the flat (25-26 degree Celsius) and he sleeps only in a short-sleeved bodysuit.

Thank you for your help!

Best,

Györgyi