Sleeping Issues

Our darling little daughter has decided that she doesn't like to sleep by herself at night anymore. It started last week when she got a cold. She had been sleeping in 4-6 hour stretches, usually with one early morning feeding (between 3-5 am), then back to sleep until 8 or so. Then she got sick and had a harder time sleeping due to her cough and congestion. But still she would get in at least one 4 hour stretch of sleep. Except for the last couple of nights, when she has been waking up every single hour, all night long. It makes for the longest night ever. If you have time to read my whole rant here, I would be happy for any advice from fellow parents out there!!

I am hoping this waking up has to do with her cold. Sometimes I think she coughs and wakes herself up, or she has difficulty breathing through her nose and wakes up. We have a humidifier running and we have been putting her in her glider to sleep, so she is propped up and not flat on her back. But still, she's not sleeping at night, at least not for more than an hour at a time. And she's really not sleeping any more than normal during the day. We try to stick with a eat, play, sleep routine through the day (she usually takes about 3 naps). I try to put her down (for both naps and at night) while she is still awake, so that she can fall asleep on her own. We have a bedtime routine: eat, bath, book, a little rocking, bed. All of these things seemed to be working, which makes the past few nights so much more frustrating.

So I've read a TON of stuff about baby sleeping habits and how to get a baby to sleep through the night. Although at this point, I'm not even worried about sleeping through the night...I'd just like to get her to sleep for a few hours at a time again, like she did when she was just a couple of weeks old! Anyway, there is so much conflicting information out there about babies and sleep. I wish there was just one right way to get them to sleep well, but I don't think there is. And I am increasingly becoming convinced that it cannot be controlled completely by the parents. I think a large majority of how a baby sleeps depends on the baby. There is only so much me and Daniel can do to help her sleep through the night, the rest is up to her, when she is ready to do it!

I'm OK with letting her "cry it out" with a few conditions. First, I think that she is too young to let her really cry for long periods of time. There may come a point where we will need to do that, but 2 months is still too young for that in my opinion. And we had some friends who said their pediatrician doesn't recommend letting them cry it out until they are double their birth weight, so they are big enough to go without that nightly feeding. So at this point, I just don't think she's quite ready to sleep through the night or cry herself to sleep...MAYBE in a few months. Plus, at this point, she is still sleeping in our room, because we think her nursery is too cold. It's really hard to let her cry when she is right next to you! I'm OK with letting her cry for 5-10 minutes before one of us gets up to comfort her. Last night, that worked once and she got herself back to sleep (for an hour). If I knew that once she cried, she would fall asleep and stay asleep it would be easier to let her cry longer. However, when she is waking up every single hour, it just seems cruel to let her cry that often, all night long. By about 4 this morning, I think we were done letting her cry at all and were ready to do anything to get her to go to sleep and stay asleep. And finally, after a little formula and some rocking, I put her down at 5:30 and she fell asleep and stayed asleep until 9. It was comforting to know that she is still able to sleep for longer periods of time.

She's taking a good nap now, which means I should probably be trying to take a nap too. But I'm not good at napping during the day, which makes the sleepless nights even more frustrating. It's a good thing she is so cute!! When she greets you with these smiles like she did this morning, it makes it easier to forget the frustrating nights!