Momma DannyJo

The art of STTN…

The above picture was taken around 1 a.m. a couple nights ago, after Jett had been screaming his little head off and thrashing about in his crib for a couple minutes, but you wouldn’t know it by the sweet smile on his face!

We’ve had some success with STTN (that’s “sleeping through the night” for all of you who are not Internet-surfing moms… They have their own language, it seems), but our success had been rather inconsistent.

He first slept for a stretch of 5 or 6 hours at around 6 weeks. Before that, he was up every 3 or 4 hours to nurse, so 5 or 6 hours seemed like a major milestone for us. At that point, we realized that there were certain things that seemed to help him sleep better. He grew out of wanting to be swaddled at 3 or 4 weeks, and ever since, he has loved sleep sacks. We also found out that he likes the room to be fairly cool, around 68 degrees or so. He also seems to like some kind of white noise (either from his sound machine or the fan), but hasn’t really taken to the mobile or light-up aquarium yet.

For awhile I thought we were doing pretty good, since most nights he would sleep 6-8 hours. However, even though I’d try to put him in his crib around the same time each night, sometimes he just wasn’t having it. He also seems to wake up at different times each day and is very inconsistent with his daytime naps.

I had always heard that it was cool to go with a baby-led schedule the first few months, and to implement a schedule around the three-month mark. Somehow, that three-month mark is already here (!), so we are starting to form more of a schedule for the little guy. I knew that we didn’t want a very strict schedule, rather one that would allow us to take some cues from Jett while also leaving a little room for spontaneity. So, after asking for some advice on Facebook, I was directed to the book “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer”. The book sounds like it should match our schedule philosophy quite well, so I’m excited to get my hands on it (I ordered it from amazon.com this morning!).

We’ve already set a couple things - a time to start the bedtime routine (8:30), a wake-up time (9:00) and a feeding schedule (every 3 hours)… I’m hoping that everything else starts to fall into place, and I’m excited to learn the tricks of the “Baby Whisperer”. I know the first few weeks won’t be easy, but I’m hoping we get the hang of it soon.

After hearing that we didn’t have a schedule yet, one of my friends said, “Well, maybe that’s why you feel crazy!” So, yes, I’m definitely hoping to not feel so crazy once we get this schedule thing straightened out! :-)