The Baby Whisperer

"Sleep Training" has become both a catch phrase and a bad word around Larsenland. Scotty pretty much didn't sleep until he was four months old, and then it was a long but less stressful week of teaching him to fall asleep on his own by basically letting him cry it out. Nothing else worked, so it was pointless to rock him to sleep anyway. We still had some rough patches but he went from insane sleepless nights to one night feeding within a few weeks.

Alyssa is a completely different type of baby, and the things that worked for Scotty were definitely NOT working the second time around. A friend recommended "The Baby Whisperer" and so far I am LOVING it. (Tracy Hogg, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to calm, connect, and communicate with your baby) Her style is halfway between attachment parenting where the baby is the focus of your life and controller of your schedule and the Ferber method of cry it out and teach your baby to be self-reliant by leaving them alone when they fuss. She gives great insight into a baby's temperament and gives you clues about how to read your baby's body language and cries to determine what they are trying to communicate. It took about 6 months for me to figure out what Alyssa was telling me she needed--her hungry cry, tired cry, bored cry, and insecure cry all sounded the same and she went from happy to crazy with no warning. When I first picked up this book and completed the little "baby temperament test" and read the blurb I was converted: the author described a day in the life of Alyssa. The things that help her calm down (swaddling, shushing, slow rocking, dark rooms, running water) were all there, along with things that make it harder to help her (instant panic, easy to overstimulate, insecurity about not seeing mom or other familiar faces, flailing and startled eyes instead of falling asleep). I know it sounds like those are the same for every baby but it's the little differences that make her harder to read and predict. The book even included an explanation for what I call Alyssa's "signs of the times." With her I get two yawns. If I don't get her in her own bed before the third yawn, it's the apocalypse. Weeping. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Flailing. Angry smurf face. And it takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half to get her to calm down enough to actually fall asleep.

It was nice to feel like someone understood my baby! It also reaffirmed what I was figuring out about how to help her sleep better on her own.

We are currently working on eliminating night feedings, and I'm following the book's suggestions as she seems spot on with other behaviors. So far so good, as we've gone from up every 3 hours to one night feeding and one "mom time." It's interesting how hard habits stick. For the past two nights, Alyssa has woken up 3 hours after her middle of the night feeding, thinking she needs to eat again. Really she doesn't need the food--the girl weighs 19 pounds!--but she's so used to eating that she freaks out if I try to do anything differently. The first night, I tried to follow her bedtime routine, like I used to do with Scotty.

Insanity.

I actually woke Eric up at 3am because she was screaming to hysterically. I thought Eric might be more successful because he doesn't smell like milk :o) Nice theory, but no dice. I was finally able to get her to calm down by following our same night routine but with a pacifier instead of milk.

I sat down in the rocking chair and tucked her against my arm just like normal. She squawked a few times just like always, which I used to think was in protest to a slow let-down. After the second squawk she nestled in and sucked happily on her pacifier and played with my hair for about five minutes before throwing herself backward. I switched to other arm and she happily pacified herself and pawed at my shirt for another five minutes before she protested again. I put her up against my shoulder and rubbed her back to "burp" her.

Instantly relaxed baby. Totally calm. Put her back down in her crib and she fell right asleep.

Last night I skipped the hour of hysterics and went right to the rocking chair. This time we followed the same routine but on a shorter scale, about 3 minutes on each side. It's insane how much of a predictable pattern she follows out of habit, even when there is no eating involved!

Tonight I'm going to try giving her her pacifier without taking her out of her crib to see if she has realized that she just wants to suck and doesn't need to eat, or think she's eating.

According to the book, within a day or two or needing my to hand her that pacifier she'll either find it on her own or stop waking up at all. Here's hoping!

I also plan to stop feeding her the first time, but I wanted her to learn that she can wake up at night and fall back asleep without eating before I tried to cut myself out of her night completely.

If anyone else out there is struggling with understanding your baby, trying to fix sleep problems or other tricky baby quirks (like wanting to be held all the time!), or just at the end of your rope and willing to try anything, I definitely recommend this book.