Monday, October 26, 2009

The big Eat 'n Sleep debate

Different people have different approaches to the whole sleep issue. With Bilaal I certainly had many a sleepless night until I sleep trained him at age 2. But reflecting back I think I could have achieved this earlier. But that raises the question when is the right age. I know the Baby Sense Franchise encourages it from early on already with their whole "put them down drowsy, but awake" concept. Problem with that is, it didn't work with Bilaal, nor with Sumayah, I tried it from the beginning and once again have a kid that needs to be 'put' to sleep. So I have this one friend who is lucky enough to have a 9 month old she can put wide a awake in her cot and leave the room for the little angel girl to fall asleep all on her own. She informs me that with the first one she wasn't so lucky and was desperate so she sleep trained him with controlled crying. So she did the same with her daughter from birth and hey presto! no sleep problems. Of course the other difference is that she has the cot in another room, I forgot to ask her if this was from the beginning, because I find I don't like to leave Sumayah to cry in the room when I know Yaasier has to go to work the next day. I would be easier if she was in another room, even though that would take away the convenience of having her within arms reach! So perhaps the alternative is to try getting her to sleep on her own in the day and evening?

For the past few nights Sumayah had been waking at about 1 am, then 2 am and finally last night 3 am, so it has been progressively improving. Everytime she wakes I pick her up and put her back to sleep. My aim is to try to get her to sleep till 5am from a 10pm bedtime. Granted she slept most of last night in my arms and I had a rather broken sleep, but I refused to feed her before 5am as she should be going for 8 to 10 hours without a feed at night (according to Baby Sense).

Let's see what happens over the next few nights!

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