Sleep - toddler and baby and the juggling act!

Sleep is a reoccurring topic here at Baby Steps. I´m sure there are a lot of readers who feel like we do - sleep is vital! Not just for the children but for us as parents too.

 

Now that our 2 year old is settled into nursery, we are seeing a better sleep pattern from him. We have had a few full nights and others with just one brief night  waking. We have, however, had to limit his nap to just one hour. We found that when he slept longer in the day he was taking a long time to fall asleep and waking more frequently at night. I guess somewhere during this year he may drop this nap completely (ahhh then what will I do)?

 

Our (almost) 6 month old has learnt that we go out of sight and he doesn´t like it one bit! At 3 months he was sleeping very well even full nights or just one night waking around 4am for a feed. At the 4 month sleep regression (where babies learn to fall asleep by themselves) we noticed he was beginning to wake more frequently and looking to feed each time. For the first two days I fed him, assuming he must be going through a growth spurt, but he began to wake even more often. I went on a sleep research frenzy and came across the no-cry sleep solution by Elizabeth Pantley. The book is designed to very gently and gradually help your baby to sleep all night. As he had been a good sleeper and I knew he was waking for comfort not hunger, I searched the book and found a very important tip that I had never heard before. Never let the baby suck to sleep - whether bottle, dummy or breast feeding. Ok, so how do you stop this once its a habit? By letting baby suck until they are nearly asleep then gently removing. If he cries replace and repeat. This takes patience and some nights I would remove 7-10 times before he fell asleep but gradually he was able to fall asleep by himself and stay that way for a while.

 

After another month he started to wake more frequently again. Now he wasn´t having a dummy and I wasn´t feeding him to sleep so what to do here? I returned to a method we used with our older son which I discovered from Tracy Hogg the baby whisperer. The pick up, put down method. Her you pick up the baby then place him back down (all the way down even if he´s crying) then repeat until he is calm and drifts off to sleep alone.

This last week he has been waking more again but now I just need to rub or pat his tummy and he goes back to sleep. Every night waking I do this until he sleeps. If he takes a long time to go to sleep or wakes again within 30 minutes, I give him a feed and make sure I finish the feed before he is asleep.

 

Here´s hoping they both sleep a full night (the same full night please) very soon. It may seem like a lot of work but it´s worth it when you are feeling sleep deprived. I´ve found it very hard especially when my husband has been travelling and I have to deal with ALL the wakings alone (sometimes both of them at the same time)!

 

I recommend both of the books I have used as they both have really good ways to help you teach your baby to sleep. Both use no-cry methods which I prefer. I would say though, each family is different, each baby too, only do what you can cope with and if it´s working for you and your family - then it´s just fine. Nobody else has to go through it every night and nobody else knows your baby like you do.

 

Good luck and good sleeps for all parents and babies :)

Books, world book day and reading

Happy World Book Day 2014


I love books and want to help my boys to love them too. I remember as a child going to get new books was one of the highlights. I hope my children feel the same way and I am starting lots of projects to encourage this behaviour.

This year I made my two boys a book each. As they are still very small this was ideal. Each page had a photograph of them with one line of text which I made up. For my eldest son I chose to write about the things he can do now he´s two as there have been several changes in his life recentley and I hope this will help him to see that he is growing and able to do so much more. For the baby, it was simply a picture book of his first months within our family.

I will give my boys a book each year on WorldBook Day (as well as other times of the year) in various formats and hope they look forward to this day. Someday I´m sure they will see hard copies of books and think it strange but I intend to keep passing my love of books onto my children.

Just say Yes!

Have you ever counted how many times you say ´no´ in a day? Impressive isn´t it?

Today I chose to say ´yes´!

 

I´m not suggesting you allow your child to do whatever they want and rule the roost, but how about thinking if the no really is a no. Sometimes I say no just because I will have to work to do whatever the yes would require. Sometimes the no is so automatic that it´s said before i´ve had time to think it through. So my new resolution is to simply think well before I say the no.

 

Here´s one example for you. We went to an open day for a new strip mall and residential area. We didn´t know what to expect but planned to go take a look and have a coffee and juice. When we arrived they had lots of activities for the kids and this amazing splash pool. It was summer hot and protected from the sun. Basically perfect for our son to play - so we said yes. As we watched him play many other children came to see the fun and wanted to join in and I was shocked at the number of parents saying no. I saw very little reason for this. We stripped our son down to his shorts and let him go but other parents were saying no. A few older children went in carefully not to get too wet but all the children our sons age were prohibited. It was a moment I was so happy I had made the just say yes rule. He had a wonderful time, great new experience and the organisers must have thought so too as they asked if they could film him for the promotional video!

 

Watch our little man on their video.

 

What have you said yes to lately?

And then there were two - preparing your toddler for the arrival of a sibling

So the hospital bag is packed. The crib is awaiting. But what about your toddler? The often anxious expression and the sudden increase in tantrums signals something, but what´s wrong? ´mum what´s going on´? How you prepare your toddler for the arrival of a new baby can significantly reduce the fear, anxiety and general stress that may be felt by all family members. Here´s our story so far.

 

The first thing we have been sure to include is that we do not make any changes to our son´s routine in the weeks leading up to and the few weeks after his brother´s arrival. Any change in routine is difficult to adapt to but this will intensify dramatically with the arrival of a new family member. We began potty training over 10 weeks before the due date and changed the bedtime routine slightly to incorporate the new baby when he arrives. This includes my husband getting up in the night and having bath time in a slightly different way. Our boy adapted to these changes fine and now they will be much smoother when his brother arrives. I´m sure he may digress slightly with potty training and become a little more insecure at night but if we continue to be consistent, these changes should be minimal and he should adjust to his little brother much more calmly.

 

Preparing for feeding time! This was a major concern for me as I plan to breastfeed and as you probably know the first weeks can be slightly horrendous even without a demanding toddler at your side demanding attention. I remember my son took around 40 minutes to feed in the beginning and its not easy or convenient to move around whilst feeding your new baby. First I sat down and thought about our day. The baby will probably have around 8 feeds in 24hours three of which will be overnight (before bed, in the night, first thing in the morning) so I would only need to solve 5 feeds. If my husband is home from work in time for the evening feed this is reduced to thinking of 4 feeds. So not too bad. Getting the baby on a rough 3 hour schedule should leave us calmer. But that's still 4 lots of 40 minutes and you know how long 40 minutes is in the life of your toddler. I figure one feed can be with a movie or tv time as we watch some tv during the day so I can see how the day is going and use the tv time during the most erratic of the feeds. So that leaves 3! My son loves reading, so books will be piled high next to the sofa where I plan to feed. I have made some mystery bags for him to explore by my side. These include random objects beginning with the same letter. So our ´S´ bag contains a small saucepan, a star, a seal, a sun and some shells. This should keep him busy and also give him more language skills. We have a variety of finger puppets too which he loves to put on his fingers while we sing nursery rhymes. We have the famous ´Nemo´ fishing game which I should be able to play one handed. I will have to remember to have his water bottle and perhaps a snack handy too so that he has everything he needs for the duration of the feed. I think we´re ready to go?!

 

The next area of planning concerns where the baby will ´play´. We intend to put the baby on the floor from an early age to allow him to gain all the necessary and important motor skills. As he will move very little at the beginning we have got a blanket which he will lie on. Our son came with us to choose it and when we got home we put it on the floor and explained to him that the baby would be here and it was the baby´s space so he must not walk on the blanket. We all practiced walking around the blanket and it was a fun activity for the three of us. Our son was so excited about the blanket however, he just wanted to touch it and pick it up. So, I got him a blanket too! He now has his space too! We practiced walking around it and he is allowed to run over it and pick it up and choose where it goes and this has been a huge success so far. Lets see how we get on when there is a little baby on the other blanket!!!

 

We moved the moses basket into our room early and prepared our sons room for the arrival of his brother. This was probably one of the biggest changes and we did have a slightly adverse reaction from our boy. We have decided our second son will also sleep on a matress from an early age and sleep in his brothers room for nap time to start with in the hope they will be able to share a room when the time comes to move the baby out of our bedroom. We got a second matress, pillow and covers. We explained to our son that the baby would sleep there when it comes. He didn´t seem to mind the second matress and we refer to it as the baby´s bed and he never asks to sleep there or seemed to have any negative feelings towards it. The moses basket was a slightly different story! It had been in the spare room since our son had finished with it so he had seen it around but was never very interested. As D day got closer we prepared the basket. We washed the sheets and sorted the matress and gave the basket a light wash and told our son the baby would sleep there - so far so good. A few weeks ago I moved the furniture around in our bedroom, had a good spring clean and moved the moses basket up there too. I din´t think to talk too much about it but when it came time to have his bath our son went into our room and saw it. He looked for a moment then turned away. I picked him up to show him inside (all ready for baby) and explained the baby would sleep in mummy and daddy´s room when it was very tiny. He wouldn´t look at the basket and pushed away from me to go down. I put him down and he had his bath and got ready for bed but did seem a little quiet. When we put him to bed that night he cried a lot and woke several times in the night not just that night but for several nights. Clearly he was unhappy about the idea of the baby being close to us but over time he has adapted and (for now, baby still hasn´t arrived) seems fine with the basket in its current location! This is a great example of why preparation should start weeks in advance. I was just imagining if this reaction had happened the night we brought the baby home. Newborn crying + toddler crying = mummy sobbing!!! So glad we avoided this (though that's not to say we won´t have an adverse reaction the night we do bring baby home)!

 

The next big thing was arranging for someone to stay with our son while we are at the hospital. I have never spent a night away from my son and am extremely anxious about this. I will be in the hospital for two nights which is standard procedure here in Brazil so some hefty planning was needed! My husband will be present at the birth and for as much time as he possibly can. He is allowed to stay at the hospital with me but we think it may be too much for our son to spend more than the necessary nights without one of us as he is still very young. Really we were at a bit of a loss as to who we could ask but have a wonderful neighbour who will be stepping in to help us out. She has two older girls so has already been through it all before. She speaks English so he will have no problems and she sees him quite regularly so he won´t be confronted by a stranger if he wakes in the night or we have to dash off during the day. Also her girls are wonderful with him and he enjoys their company very much, completely forgetting about us when they are around. These factors leave us very calm when thinking about leaving him for the necessary time and know that he is in good hands.

 

So far these are the steps we´ve taken to reduce the potential stress of the baby´s arrival. For sure we will have some tense moments but if we keep in mind that it is temporary and that it is fear causing them we will be just fine. Our son just loves giving his ´baby´ or my tummy cuddles and asks several times a day (probably comfort from me more than the baby but its very sweet either way). Throughout the pregnancy we have spoken to him about the baby and he seems to love him just as much as we do. Not we anxiously await his arrival in the next few weeks and will let you know if our preparations were adequate! Any tips would be great so please leave us a comment :)
 

Children learn what they live...

At the Social Good Brazil seminar

As the Social Good Brazil seminar is taking place this week, I thought it appropriate to remind us all that we are role models for our children. 

He is a little poem to inspire us to raise happy children for the world.

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy.

If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.

If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient.

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate.

If children live with fairness, they learn justice.

If children live with security, they learn to have trust.

If children approval, they learn to like themselves.

If children live with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.