When I was pregnant I had some idealised view of how I would be as a mother. I was going to be a natural earth mother who did everything with ease; effortlessly anticipating my Baby’s every need. People would look at me in awe and say “Oh my word, she’s a natural”.
Excuse me while I throw up a little bit in my mouth. Clearly it didn’t quite happen that way.
I’d bucked the routine idea from the beginning as I was of the view that natural mothers didn’t need them. They just fell into their own routine. And I’m sure this happens for some women, but it didn’t work that way for me. And when we got to about 4 months (when there is apparently a major sleep regression) things just got a little bit out of control. Monkey started waking 4, 5, 6 or sometimes even more times per night, consistently. He was so unhappy. And we were struggling so much with day sleeps too which can apparently be linked to crappy night sleep. It was one big vicious cycle.
I was trying to operate from cues (like natural mothers who are so in sync with their kids they just KNOW when they are tired) but I was either missing the boat or trying too early. Whatever it was I was screwing it up. It. Was. Not. Working.
Eventually I just couldn’t fit everything into the day and no one was sleeping so at almost 6 months I decided that we had to try a routine. My cousin had used the basics of the Tizzie Hall one in "Save Our Sleep" and although I didn’t necessarily agree with all her methods I loved how her routine was super structured. It took all the guess work out of it and that’s what I needed. I was done with guessing.
The change was astonishing. Within 3 days I had a Baby that was going down quite easily for his day sleeps. Sometimes he’d wake after the first 40min cycle but those times I took one of the suggestions from the book and put him in either the pram or the car to encourage more sleep. It worked. He also started sleeping like a normal child at night and only waking for one more feed after the dream feed.
I was pretty strict with the routine at first but it worked. Flexibility came later. If the routine said he was awake at 7am then I woke him up as I needed him to be tired at 9am for his morning sleep. By sticking to it really closely he just started to naturally become tired or wake up around the scheduled times. We moved house only weeks after we started the routine and Monkey made the transition smoothly. We had a few little blips while he adjusted to sleeping at the new place but I hardly even remember them...unlike how I vividly remember the horror of waking countless time per night for around 2 months.
The thing is this: my boy thrives on a routine. It suits his personality. And now that he has become a toddler I can see this even more. I spent so much time trying to “go with the flow” like a natural mum that I forgot that part of being that mum is to recognise the needs of MY child. Which in this case was a routine. I thrived on it too as I’m a routine kinda girl. I like to be organised and know how things will be happening, much like my child! I will never forget that feeling of having so much free time once we got our routine in place. I was able to organise to go out without worrying about monkey falling asleep as I knew exactly when that would be. The structure was actually liberating and much easier. Who knew?!
xo Rachael
Author Bio - Rachael is a sometimes blogging, always mummying, single mum of a 20 month old little boy. They live a happy seaside life in a small coastal northern NSW town in Australia. You can check out some of her other thoughts about the world at www.mummyflyingsolo.com
Author Bio - Rachael is a sometimes blogging, always mummying, single mum of a 20 month old little boy. They live a happy seaside life in a small coastal northern NSW town in Australia. You can check out some of her other thoughts about the world at www.mummyflyingsolo.com
Love the blog! I learned early that my son like routine - but I kept a notebook the first few weeks of his life to see what his "natural" routine was and then helped him stick to it. I learned later on (much later on) that boys in particular like structure, they feel more secure. I'm glad that you finally got some sleep!
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