According to the people who make stuff up, Doodle has begun “sleeping through the night.” I use quotations here because officially sleeping through the night means 6 hours. I know few adults who can make it regularly on 6 hours sleep so I always have to laugh when I’m told a newborn (who needs 14+ hours of sleep a day) is sleeping through the night after 6 hours. Trust me, getting woken up after 6 hours of sleeping does not feel like a full night’s sleep to me and usually falls between 2 and 3 am which is far from wakeup time in my book!
Doodle usually falls asleep for the night between 8 and 9 and while he did sleep 8 hours two nights ago, he’s usually closer to the 6 hours and is then up again between 3 and 4 hours later which still doesn’t get us to morning (8 pm+6 hours=2 am+3 hours=5 am). While he does go some nights only waking to feed once or getting close enough for his 2nd feed to wake-up time that I can just pull him into bed and nurse while I doze, I am definitely looking forward to the night when I go to sleep and wake up on my own!
Unfortunately, even as a mommy of 3, I have not yet figured out the magic of getting babies to sleep through the night (really sleep, not this 6 hour nonsense!). Honeybun started sleeping 9 pm to 6 am on her own at around 9 weeks. I chalk this up, though, to our weird schedule. From the time she was 6 weeks I was working at a childcare center and had to be there at 7:00. I had to wake Honeybun up at 5:45 to feed her, feed me, get us both dressed and get there on time! There were a few morning where she would wake to feed at 4:30 or 5:00 and then I had to decide if I should wake her again before we left or not. I think she finally just realized it was worth just sleeping until I woke her up for the day. Amazingly, though, within a few weeks she was sleeping through until after 7:00 on the weekends!
Sugarplum was not a great sleeper. She was 7 months before she was getting through the entire night without parental interference even though I stopped feeding her at 4 months (the chronicle of Sugarplum’s sleep can be found in “The Scream Heard Around the Neighborhood”). I wish I had the magic potion or formula for getting babies through the entire night but I don’t. We’re only at 11 weeks, so there’s hope Doodle will be better than Sugarplum was. It’s just a situation of “sleep and see”!
