But then I came across the Baby Whisperer. It's a terrible title, you have to agree. We've all heard of the Horse Whisperer, who gently whispers platitudes to an unruly horse to tame it, turning it from an untrained, wild beast into a docile animal that will accept humans, so the title of the Baby Whisperer implies you will be partaking in some kind of low-level babbling with your baby to communicate with them on a 'deeper level'. It sounded a bit hippy-ish to me. But the title kept coming up again and again, with other mums mentioning that the baby whisperer had something good to say about nearly everything, so I picked up a cheap copy for 11p on Amazon and thought I would flick through it out of interest. It's not a new title, by any means, nor is it unknown. Second only to Gina Ford it is perhaps one of the most widely read baby books of the lot. Even so, I found that a lot of my friends hadn't read it. I am now feeling almost evangelical about this book. I want to tell the world how much it has changed our lives. So excuse me while I spread the word.
Alec has been a lovely baby, very easy indeed compared to many, I think, but as he has become older and more aware of the world a few difficulties started to creep in. The main one being that around 5-6 weeks he started refusing to nap during the day. If we were lucky and we caught him at the right moment, he might nap on me or in the sling, but otherwise I felt compelled to get out of the house as soon as possible every day so that he could sleep in the car or the pram. People kept commenting to me about how amazing I was to be getting out and about with him, but I had to! Putting him down anywhere in the house to sleep, even on the sofa beside me, was totally impossible. As he began to nap less and less, he also began to cry more and more, and I started to wonder where my placid little baby had gone. The baby that everyone told me was so quiet, and about whom they commented it was amazing that they never heard him cry. It was pretty clear to me that Alec was getting tired, but was fighting off his sleep, and would only be reluctantly lulled into it by the movement of the pram or the car - and even then, he would often fight it.
The Baby Whisperer has chapters on sleeping, eating, and activity among other things, and I just casually flicked through the sleep chapter the night the book arrived. She suggests a 'structured routine' called E.A.S.Y.: Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your Time. The baby's day should consist of consecutive cycles of this pattern. A no brainer, it seems, as that's pretty much all there is in a baby's life. For her, though, it's important that the E does not come before the S, so that the baby doesn't get used to being nursed to sleep. Ok, fine. This wasn't as interesting as the next bit: when it comes to sleep, we need to recognise the baby's signals and respond as soon as possible. She suggests putting them down to nap when you see the first yawn, and certainly by the third yawn. If you leave it much longer, you risk missing the 'window' and them becoming over-tired, by which time they will find it much harder to drop off. By the time they're crying with tiredness it's too late and you will have a battle on your hands. Now this bit was news to me, as I realised I'd only really begun to think Alec was tired when he started to cry. So the next morning, we got up, I fed him, and then we played for a bit. As soon as I saw him yawn, I picked him up, gave him a cuddle, wrapped him up in a blanket and put him in his cot. I said some nice things like 'have a nice sleep, see you a little later' and patted him on the chest. He blinked at me, closed his eyes and went to sleep for the next hour - this just an hour after he had first woken up. I couldn't believe it was so easy (or E.A.S.Y. if you will...). It's been three days now and we've been following this basic cycle with huge success. In these three days Alec has been a happy, smiley little baby with hardly any crying at all. And what's more, I suddenly have time to get things done while he naps. We haven't needed to leave the house unless there was a reason to do so (of course we still go for a walk each day, so he has one of his naps in his pram anyway) and our evenings have become so much more civilised, as he's not crying with extreme tiredness. In fact, he naps while we eat dinner. Eureka! He is also sleeping much better at night, having gone from waking every 1-2 hours, to going 4-5 hours at a stretch. For those that worry that 2 months is too young to introduce a routine, I agree. But this isn't a routine, it's more like common sense. There's no clock-watching involved (in the book she suggests we do time it, but for me Alec is still too young to be conforming to a schedule, so our times are flexible according to his cues), it's simply a case of reading the signals - signals that are simple but that I was completely oblivious to before picking up the book.
His sleeping has also been dramatically improved by some use of swaddling. A lot of people had told me along the way that I should try it and that it would help Alec sleep for longer stretches, but because he was put in a 'growbag' (a sleeping bag with arm holes) right from day one in the hospital, we were a little resistant to it. And our botched attempts to swaddle him with a small sheet at home weren't very successful so we gave up. But each night when I put him back in his cot after feeding, he would wake himself up with the startle reflex as I put him down, and start crying, until I picked him up and cuddled him, and then the same thing would happen again... One night, he was so overtired that we decided to try bundling him up in a cosy blanket and he fell asleep almost immediately. So we started swaddling him for all his sleeps and he no longer startles, and seems so much more content and settled in his sleep.
I should, however, point out a couple of things about how we swaddle him. My knowledgeable mother-in-law, a retired GP, pointed out an edition of Inside Health she heard on Radio 4 which documented some potential side-effects of swaddling, namely that it can stop the hip joints forming properly because their legs are pulled together, and this can cause hip dysplasia later in life. You can read the transcript of the programme here. Starting to swaddle from 8 weeks is also a little late in the day, particularly because at this stage babies like to bring their fists up to their mouths and suck on them. So what we do with Alec is kind of a 'loose swaddle'. His legs are free to move and kick about at the bottom, which he likes very much (and as well as the hip benefits, I think it also helps him get rid of his wind) and his arms aren't pinned by his sides - they are inside the swaddle so he is cosy and doesn't startle himself, but he can bring his hands up to his mouth. Finally, we bought a proper swaddling blanket, the classic Miracle Blanket, since our hapless attempts with a normal blanket weren't doing the trick. We will probably need to stop swaddling him around the 16 weeks mark, but by then they have more or less lost their startle reflex so with luck we shouldn't need it any more.
And that, folks, is our recipe for a Happy Baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment