After being home with my sweet daughter, Farrah, for a few weeks and adjusting to life with very little sleep, I decided it was time to do some reading to help me figure out how to help her get in a good routine and get the sleep she needed. I was completely clueless when it came to babies. I have never really been around many babies. I am also a planner/scheduler who is a little OCD. So, I needed a plan! I was given the book On Becoming Baby Wise as a Christmas gift, so I decided to start with that. Everyone kept telling me that Farrah had her days and nights mixed up. I really feel that the book, On Becoming Baby Wise, helped me help Farrah figure this out. On Becoming Baby Wise gave me a plan to follow to help my baby learn the difference between day and night. The main goal of the book is to have a healthy, growing baby who sleeps through the night by 8 to 12 weeks. I do feel that the book helped me accomplish this goal. I did not follow the BW plan completely. After reading the book, I was definitely a little confused and trying to figure out how I was going to do everything on the plan. After searching the Internet for some help, I came across the blog Chronicles of a Babywise Mom. Wow! What a lifesaver! The blog helped me understand parts of the BW plan that I did not understand as well as showed me that I did not have to follow it exactly. I simply used the parts that I felt would work for us. Farrah started sleeping through the night at 9 1/2 weeks. What a welcomed milestone! At this point, Farrah was eating on a combination 2 1/2 – 3 hour schedule. She had a bottle at 8:00 PM and then went to bed. I would wake her at 10:00 PM for one last feeding. This was supposed to be her “dream feed”, but I never was very successful at keeping her from waking all the way during this feeding. During the second month, she had stopped waking to eat in the middle of the night. The next big step was to cut out the 10:00 PM bottle. I had not even thought about trying to cut out this feeding in fear that she would start waking to eat in the middle of the night again. One night while we were in out of town, I fed Farrah at 8:00 PM and put her to bed. I typically would stay up until her 10:00 PM feeding. Well this particular night I accidentally fell asleep. I woke in a panic scrambling for my phone to see what time it was. It was 4:00 AM, and Farrah was still asleep! So I decided to just go back to sleep and see if she would sleep until her first bottle which was usually between 6:00 AM and 6:30 AM. Of course I figured as soon as I got back to sleep she would wake up, but she didn’t. She slept through the night! So, that was the end of her 10:00 PM bottle, by accident. Farrah is now almost 6 months old. I really feel that the combination of the book, On Becoming Babywise, and the blog, Chronicles of a Babywise Mom, really helped me “figure out” how to help my daughter get a goo, restful nights sleep. I plan on getting the second BW book, On Becoming Babywise II, soon! Check out my blog, Being Farrah’s Mom, for more of my adventures of figuring out this whole “Mom” thing!
Amberchenson