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Posted: August 27, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized 16 Comments »Feeding is going really well with the on demand thing all day. I do nothing but nurse, but I can basically accept that. His latch is good and my nipples hurt far, far less – they feel downright tough.
Now I would like him to sleep. Somewhere other than ON me.
From what I can tell after talking to friends, this infant sleep business seems to be largely a matter of personality. Other on-demand-fed babies slept perfectly in their bassinets or co-sleepers or cribs. I don’t think it’s something I did to him – he wanted to sleep only on me starting with night #2 in the hospital, for heaven’s sake. But I do think it’s something we are reinforcing slowly but surely. I try to put him in his Moses basket and he coos and sleeps and tosses about for about 10-20 minutes before screaming again. Last night was AWFUL, between the attempts to put him in there and rock him to sleep and the really endless on-demand feedings all night. If he hasn’t gained weight today I will scream like he does.
I am NOT asking to sleep train a 12 day old. I am not a moron. If nothing changes, he will sleep on me for several months (though I will continue to try to put him in his basket as often as I have patience to do so) and then we will sleep train when he is old enough. But I would love any tips from people who had babies who would only sleep on a warm body. Any success stories?
our son would only sleep on us for a few weeks until my aunt gave us an infant-sized microwavable bean bag. We’d heat it up until warm, then put it in his cradle for 5-10 minutes, then put him in, and place the still warm, not hot bag on his lower half. The warmed bed, combined with the warm weight of the bag seemed to sufficiently replicate the warm parent feeling for him, and he was able to sleep in his cradle thereafter. your son is beautiful. Congrats!
I don’t have any advice but I’m so glad the feeding is going better. The sleeping-on-you is definitely not something you “did” to him. Babies are all weird and different. I bet you’ll have it figured out by the time I get there, but if not, I look forward to joining you in the experimentation. (We are still performing experiments on K., just around different issues.)
He wants to sleep on you because he LOVES you! More than anything in the world.When you’re not next to him, he can’t get his head around thatand maybe thinks you’re gone forever.
He’ll settle into whatever way is his. You’re not doing anything wrong.
Ya know, I’d love you tell you there’s a magic switch that will make him sleep alone in a bassinet or something, but we never found it. DS, who is now 2, only slept touching one of us (naps included) for at least a year. Around 1, we were able to put him down gently, but we didn’t transition him to his own bed until 18 months, and he was 2 before he figured out how to sleep all night. Now at 2 1/2 he not only sleeps all night, but he does it in his own bed, AND falls asleep without a boobie in his mouth.
It will come. If you have not figured out the side lying position for nursing, find a LLL leader, or someone knowledgable to come over and show you (Its a funky one, and you want someone to teach you). It SAVED MY SANITY. It meant that i could sleep on my side near DS, and he literally kicked me when he needed to latch, and i fell asleep while he was nursing. Got much more sleep that way.
The other bit with the screaming… we got DS adjusted a few times shortly after birth by the Chiropractor, and that made a WORLD of difference. He was all compressed.
I would say don’t worry about this being a long-term thing. Phine would only sleep on Mia for the first few weeks. Then she went to one of those in the bed foam things, then the co-sleeper then finally her crib in her room.
The sleeping on a person thing is super short lived, so indulge in it all you want to now. One day soon you’re going to miss the days he would sleep on you because it gets to a point where they just don’t want to do it anymore.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but are you swaddling him when putting him down? That was the only way Katie would sleep at first (unless she was in my arms). She just needed to feel more secure.
I’m glad to hear that BF’ing is going better. Those first couple of weeks for me were hell.
Goodluck with trying to find a better solution for sleeping! Although it’s wonderful to have them sleep on you, it’s hard to get anything done that way!
Do you have a sling? Pepito frequently will not nap in his crib, but he will fall asleep (and then can sometimes be transferred to the crib) in a sling on one of us. Means that we are not immobile while he sleeps, which is nice.
Lurker coming out here….
My son did the same thing for several weeks. I slept upright on the couch with him against me. It was torture. He would bust out of his swaddle and scream if we put him down. I actually had to hold him when I went to the bathroom. Nightmarish.
We bought the amazing miracle blanket and it was the best thing we ever did. (you can google it but I found it cheapest at baby.center) It was the only swaddle he could not get out of and I was finally able to put him down. It gives them that secure feeling of being back in the womb. I buy it for every expectant mom I know.
Good luck and congrats!
No personal experience here – she was pretty willing to sleep anywhere anytime (and definitely loved sleeping on a person, but it wasn’t a requirement) – but I second the warming suggestion. If you don’t have a microwaveable beanbag, put a heating pad in the bassinette before he goes down (and then take it out before putting him in, of course). And you can try one of those heartbeat sound things – does your white noise machine have a heartbeat setting?
If those don’t work, and you can comfortably wear the sling, definitely give that a try. A wrap (e.g. Moby Wrap) will allow you to get the most done while wearing him as it will hold him super-snug so you can use both hands all the time.
I’m sorry. It can be really overwhelming having a baby need you in a physical sense all the damn time. I really felt “touched out” a lot in the first months. That is one part of mothering that I don’t hear people talk about a lot- the relentless invasion of personal space. I just remember not wanting to wear a sling because after bf-ing them both on demand and holding/walking with them all day, it was too much to ask. No words of advice… just good luck. It is very hard sometimes.
Baby #2 sounds similar in temperament to your Beckett, and for awhile, we just let him sleep on us (per the “whatever gets you through the night” mentality that I adopt with newborns). That lasted about 3-4 weeks before we started putting him in his Baby Papasan swing, which sort of mimics the snuggly feeling of being held. The motion also soothed him. I believe that he has kind of a problem with reflux (but nothing that I would medicate for), and being more at an angle makes him feel better. At almost 5 months, he’s still sleeping in the swing, but that is going to be changing soon…we hope…
I wish you luck. High needs babies can be very stressful, and my only other piece of assvice is to not have expectations of any kind for awhile.
Well, I hesitate to post because I don’t think mine can be viewed as a “success” story, but if it helps you to know that this is totally normal behavior for babes and not one that you are creating or reinforcing in any way, then I’ll put in my two cents.
My Pi slept on me for naps until I went back to work when he was twelve weeks old. He was able to go down alone in his co-sleeper at about seven weeks (I think?) for the beginning part of the night only. After his first wake-up he wouldn’t re-settle anywhere but with us. We night-weaned at 8 months and at that point he began to accept being put back down in his crib.
There is eventual “success”, the definition of which you will probably re-examine and re-evaluate many, many times. It’s just different for everyone and there are no real hard and fast rules – maddening, I know.
You are doing a wonderful job. You really are. It’s so hard and you’re handling it beautifully, one day and night at a time.
I would say we are a success story. Hannah would only sleep on me, or preferably Beth. Then beside us in bed… again, she preferred Beth. This started immediately from birth. We put her down every time we could, even if for only a few moments (10-20 minutes was a LONG stretch for us at the beginning). We would at least start her out in the bassinet. Later we would start her in the PNP bassinet, the PNP itself. And finally her crib. And now – only when she is sick will she sleep on us. We’ve had her in our room and now is upstairs and she goes down well. And that’s without picking CIO as our method of sleep training – we are wimps so we ran to her. And with all of that I would say Hannah is a success story on wimps raising a sleeping baby.
But I 100% agree on it being about personality. Hannah was and is a cuddler – and someone, a dear friend, told me to do everything to enjoy it because they are never this tiny and cuddly again. And you know what, I am tearing up because at 14 months I can say it’s true – Hannah adores us but cuddles are rare most of the time because she’s just too busy. Ok, I am weepy now and going to look in on my sleeping baby!!!
you could try a swing. one that rocks itself … fisher price makes one that swings sideways and front to back, with lights and soft music. my daughter would be out about three seconds after we put her in there.
Well this might not be advice you would want to try…but for us the thing that helped with sleep was to let him sleep on his belly. I had been doing up ever 20 minutes for two nights when someone said let him sleep on his belly so I went home and tried it. (it was a day time nap so I watched him the whole time) He slept for almost four hours. He never slept on his back again. I did talk to our dr about it and he did agree to this. Anyway just what worked for us.
Glad you gave into the “on demand” b/c seriously, that’s how it’s supposed to be in the beginning, I swear! In bed, nursing, and eating, and sleeping.