Sleeping....

Sleep........it's a beautiful thing.

The last 3 nights I've fed Kellyn a tad later then usual for the last feeding around 9:30-10:00. (the one where I wake her up and she sleepily eats and falls back asleep regardless of how many wipes I wipe on her to wake up). After those feedings she has woken up until 6 a.m. Holy shnickies!!!

You NEVER realize how good a full night's rest is you get one and you realize what you were missing for all that time. ;) Come on moms, you know the feeling!

Anyway, as I woke up this morning I was reminded of my "Parenting and Family" class I took in college 11 years ago.

This was RIGHT after I was married and my sister and I were taking this online course from USU together. It was fun, but I'll never forget one of the assignments. It was something to the effect of asking any mom about how they would teach their babies to sleep. I looked at my sister-in-law (who was living with my parents for the summer w/ her soon-to-be-4 kids) and asked her what she did. The advice has ALWAYS stuck with me and I've done it for all 7 kids.

I tend to NEVER pass on "advice" since passing on parenting advice gets SUPER old to weary moms, but I don't really consider it advice. They're more like tips.

Some of my kids liked sleep a LOT more then others, trust me, so it's not a miracle worker but it really helps especially right at the beginning w/ newborns.

She told me when waking up to feed the baby at night, she ALWAYS kept the room dark and didn't play/talk/etc with the baby during night time.

Meaning, I go into the room (I'm one of those weird moms that has never had the baby in the same room as me, even from day 1), leave the lights off, feed the baby, burp and put right back to sleep. The point being to not let the baby think that it is playtime ("PARTY WITH MOM AT 3 A.M. EVERYNIGHT!!) and to get their body to reset their  backward schedule and understand that THIS is night time. Make sense?

It was such a small tip. But I really think it has helped. I try to keep diaper changing to a minimum too, oddly enough. Depending on the diaper brand you might be able to let a wet diaper go through another feeding if the baby doesn't have sensitive skin. Or not use a wipe for wet diapers during the night. (Seriously, wouldn't a wet/cold wipe on YOUR hiney wake you up?!?!? ). If the baby is poopy I just change the baby in the middle of the feeding, so the last part of the feeding relaxes them again.  

It's tricky when they're little doing it all in the dark but there's usually some lamp post on the street outside or moonlight enough to help out.

Anyway, it's funny how her one tip really helped me out w/ my new babies and how I've kept that tip this whole time. I started thinking, I wonder if someone else could use the tip. Granted every baby is different (DON'T I KNOW IT!!!!), so there's no blanket formula for sleep, but maybe this will help someone like it did me 11 years ago.