Headbath

Sleep is crucial to a baby's developing temperament. Come to think of it, sleep is crucial to anyone's temperament. Every evening around 6, my three-month old would stare at me with sleepy yet alert eyes, willing me to do something. I had no idea what. But I knew that the fussiness would start in 15 minutes and go on for two hours until she wore herself out after an evening of crying and making me cry. One evening, the proverbial straw had broken my literal (upper) back. Supine, I googled infant sleep and got pages and pages of self-proclaimed experts unable to reach a consensus about how often infants need to be asleep. Some comments on these websites led me to bunch of books, all of which I bought. Of them, I found the following three books to the most helpful. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Dr. Marc Weissbluth  ( ₹454.50 ) . Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Dr. Richard Ferber  ( ₹773) ; and The No-Cry Nap Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley ( ₹475 )....

Two weeks since the last update , and I'm happy to note the following changes: E takes three naps consistently.  I no longer need to do any shushing or rocking but I do occasionally nurse her in bed. Bedtime is not arduous at all - she fusses for a bit and then goes to sleep herself. E has figured out which fingers she likes to suck. Hooray for my nipples! I can actually do things during naptime. Those Internet memes are not going to catch up on themselves. Babies can be real babies about sleeping. If only they'd grow up about it! The Morning Nap The timing of this nap depends on when she wakes up in the morning. I see a variance in her morning wake up time but it's usually somewhere between 6 and 7:30 AM. Accordingly, the morning nap happens anytime between 8 and 9 AM.  E spends her mornings with her father. Once he has to start getting ready for work, we take the dog out and generally expose E to some fresh air and noise (my assumption being that mornin...

Okay. So my last post on baby sleep  happened around a week ago. Since then, I've logged E's sleep and I've also seen (with much delight) how she's "consolidating" her sleep as promised by Dr. Weissbluth. The Sleep Logs Over the last week, I've been logging her daytime sleep in the attempt to convert her from a sneaky in-arms cat napper (30 mins every 60 to 90 mins) to a big girl who takes big naps in her big bed. My husband made me a Google Spreadsheet that I could update on my phone to log sleep start and end times, and also measure the time from when she last awoke to when she went back to sleep. This helped me gauge the times when she gets really sleepy. As of now - she gets really sleepy about an hour after she wakes up (around 8 AM) and then 11:15 AM (yeah, it's that precise) and then around 5 PM (her shortest nap and she doesn't really want to nap but I insist because otherwise it's a nightmare getting her to go to sleep at bedtim...

My baby is 12 weeks old today! She's hurtling out of the newborn phase. In any event, she's outgrown her newborn clothes. In these past weeks, she's had two doses of vaccinations and a surgery. Nothing too serious but frightening for the new parents nonetheless. These past months have been exciting, to say the least. She's moving from being a sleepy (and portable) newborn to a lively girl with clear likes and dislikes. It's been fun taking her out. Last month, we took her to a friend's reception and she just slept in her soft carrier through all the noise. Everyone commented on how cute and calm she was. I'm trying to get her into a daytime nap schedule as well. To this end, I've been reading two books: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth ; and The No-cry Nap Solution by Elizabeth Pantley The first book contains very little on newborn sleep and just tells me that baby will be consolidating daytime sleep from weeks 12 to 1...