Friday, August 03, 2007

You can lead a baby to the crib...

But you can't make her sleep.

At 15 weeks, we are trying to work with Kylie's sleep. She does a great job of going right to sleep for her morning and early afternoon naps. She cries for only five minutes or less. I affectionately named these her "burn off" cries because it seems that she has to burn off that last bit of energy before settling in for a nap.

But my gosh!! I'm watching her like a hawk for the first signs of drowsiness- yawning or rubbing her eyes. And I'm reading book after book on the different sleep "methods". All of this because little Kylie can be a BEAR between 5pm and whenever she goes to sleep for the night.

We've seen some improvement in the last week- she's getting a late afternoon nap and she's going to bed earlier (between 9:00-10pm).

But when she gets overtired, the inconsolable crying makes me want to hit my head against the wall. My little girl can seem QUITE STUBBORN (I wonder where she gets it?).

I've kept a journal of Kylie's activities since she was born. The early months were all about her eating. Now the entries are all about her sleep. I suppose I should lighten up about it all. A picture like this should do it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thaya was like this too. We tried everything. One day, I nursed her, swaddled her, and stuck her in her crib. Just like that she fell asleep and slept through the night. We couldn't believe it.

We just swaddle her body now so she can get used to sleeping with her arms out. Also, she now likes to go into her crib awake. She likes having "alone time". When she is ready, she calls out to us, we go in, stick her sucker in her mouth, and she's off to dream land.

But, every baby is different. It is amazing how out of nowhere she'll change and just "get good" at going to sleep!

SJayneI said...

She is just getting cuter every day, isn't she?

Hey, thanks for your comment on dinner. I would like your recipe for the white chicken chili if you don't mind. You can e-mail it to me if you'd like at SJIngersoll@GMail.com

Alayna said...

Sleep has been our biggest thing, too. I send lots of sympathy and hope that things improve soon. It's helped me to remember that (as with many things with babies) sleep is very up and down. Sometimes it will go easily and sometimes will seem like the most difficult thing in the world. We're in one of those difficult phases right now, too, and I'm just trying to remember that it will get easier again at some point. Good luck!

Mo said...

I think those evening hours were the toughest around here too. I really don't even remember what we did about it or if anything helped, but it did eventually get better. Another adorable pic too!

Melissa said...

LOL. Great picture!

Mermaidgrrrl said...

I was watching Seth for tired signs too and he never gave them, he would just suddenly start screaming instead and by then it was too late. Instead I now watch the clock and once he's been up for an hour I start to settle him by sitting with him quietly for 10 minutes singing a little song, then I swaddle him very tightly and rock him gently to sleep. He tends to be a cat napper which is a habit I'm trying to break, so when he wakes up after 30 - 45 minutes I resettle him. Yeah he screams, but it's only for 10 minutes and he usually sleeps for another half an hour or so. It has totally changed our experience of him. He's so much happier now and less screamy. Maybe Kylie is like Seth and doesn't do sleepy signals really? BTW - I'm using Trixie Tracker to monitor how I'm going with Seth and it's helping a lot. There is a definite correlation between his crying and screaming and how many hours awake time he's had during the day. By using the tracker it's made me almost competitive against myself and made me stricter about persisting with the settling even when I feel like I can't be bothered!