Coping with a Sleepless Baby

My babies have been exceptionally poor sleepers, but I have seldom felt sleep-deprived. How is that possible you may ask? Well, I found strategies to minimize the amount of time I had to be awake.

One way I minimized the time I was awake was by only changing diapers in the middle of the night if they were dirty. I discovered that when I changed my babies' diapers in the middle of the night, it always caused them to be more alert and took them longer to fall back asleep. If I had problems with them wetting through diapers before morning, switching to a larger sized diaper always solved the problem.

Another thing that would minimize time is to nurse your baby instead of bottle-feeding your baby at night. There is no preparation work for nursing, therefore, you can start faster and be done earlier if you nurse. I always fell back to sleep while nursing, which reduced my awake time even more.

I also continued nursing my child back to sleep long after he was six months old and being told that most babies no longer needed feedings at night once they reached six months. I decided that just because he might not need the calories for growing, he could use the antibodies to stay healthy. Furthermore, nursing him to sleep was so quick and easy, that I did not want to give that up and have to find other methods to put my baby back to sleep.

With my second child I learned even more ways to minimize my awake time. The biggest way that I reduced the time I was awake was allowing my baby to sleep in bed with me. I could nurse without getting up, and therefore, was only awake for a few seconds each time he woke. My baby also waked less often when cuddled with mommy than when sleeping alone in his crib. Therefore, I had to wake up less often because he woke less often and because I barely had to wake to nurse him when he did wake up.