sleep training

Here are the little things we celebrated this week-

1. We now have three rolling babies (Rylin, Harper, and Mason), plus they all turn and scoot a bit. This meant time for changes in our den arrangement. First we sold all of our little baby equipment (three rock ‘n’ plays, two swings, three Bumbo chairs, and two bouncy seats) on Craigslist. We caught babies trying to flip over while in these types of seats so it was time to say farewell. With all the movement and exploration we noticed far too many baby tangle ups so our coffee table found refuge upstairs. I really like how our den works now. We have just two baby contraptions and an activity table so there’s much more open space for all.

Oh boy! The babies are like heat seeking missles when they see a toy being used by another baby. Harper is stretching out to nab Sydney's toy.

Oh boy! The babies are like heat seeking missiles when they see a toy being used by another baby. Harper and Sydney seem to be scuffling over that book. As of now, they don’t mind having a toy snatched up, but it won’t be long before there are wails of protest.

For the first time in months there is nothing below the television besides baskets concealing baby toys. Ahh!

2. We summoned the babies to be Mini Monets once again for our spring artwork.

This is my favorite piece of baby art so far. We used the babies’ footprints to make robins for spring.

3. Even when we scrubbed it with rubbing alcohol, Mason’s DOC Band started smelling like a foul foot. I tried putting baby powder on his hair as suggested, but he just smelled like a stinky foot dusted in baby powder. My sister reminded me of an amazing product I bought in Vegas a few years ago. It is coconut scented deodorant powder from Lush. They use organic and chemical free ingredients at Lush, which is baby friendly in my book. Now his noggin smells like summery coconut even after hours of wear!

Even when we scrubbed it with rubbing alcohol, Mason's DOC Band started smelling like a foot after day one. I tried putting baby powder on his hair, but he just smelled like a stinky foot dusted in baby powder. My sister reminded me of this amazing product! It is coconut scented deodorant powder from Lush. Now his head smells like coconut even after hours of wear!

There are a few Lush stores internationally located, but if there is not one near you, check out http://www.Lush.com

4. Sydney is clearly our Little Evil Knievel with her stunt girl moves.

Sydney’s latest trick is planking. She should have a seriously developed core now! Sometime we catch her bear crawling like this, but of course she only goes backwards so it’s not efficient means of locomotion.

5. I found my latest snack craving this week when we seemed to have way too many pretzels in the pantry. I paired them with peanut butter and Nutella. I just love salty/ sweet snack combos! George was less than impressed, but I think it is yum-o!

Sometimes I dip the pretzel in each scrumptious spread while other time I mix the spreads together first. Either way I love it!

6. During playtime I’ve been playing children’s music for the babies so they don’t hear only me talking all day. And so I don’t hear myself talking all day! Most of our children’s music was sung by the Fisher Price Little People. The Little People have quite the repertoire of children’s sing-a-long tunes and they can carry a tune, but their voices started grating on me. I visited the itunes store yesterday and purchased a bunch of folksy-indie children’s music that is much more appealing to me. I am the newest fan of Frances England and Elizabeth Mitchell. Seasoned parents, do you know of great children’s music not sung by Wee Sing or the Little People? I accumulated a good bit, but I will soon tire of the 40 some odd songs I have now.

What little things highlighted your week?

hugs!

Amber

While I was on bedrest I managed to devour every baby magazine I could get my grubby paws on and poured over several pregnancy books. But do you think I read much about baby routines? Of course not! I read a dry book about basic (well duh! type) baby care, but not much about routines and schedules for the day. As a school psychologist I know a good deal about elementary aged children and I know that routines are key, but I am no baby expert.

When everyone trickled home, we kept them on the NICU schedule of feeding every three hours at 12 am, 3 am, 6 am, 9 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 6 pm, and 9 pm so we had eight feeds per day. This was totally exhausting! After feeds during the day, we kept them in the living room in various contraptions that propped them up to prevent reflux and/ or lulled them to sleep. At night, we’d put them all in their beds with SIDS monitors and the baby monitor on so we could keep tabs on everyone. While this worked for our tiny preemies, they began to outgrow this routine rather quickly. One night we woke up at about 3 am and panicked when we realized we didn’t feed anyone at midnight. We successfully dropped the midnight feed. This was great!

As the babies grew, they started going closer to four hour feeds in the daytime, which was nice. However, I soon figured out that if they went four hours all day long, they never went more than four hours at night. Now this mama wanted more than three hours of consecutive sleep at night, so intervention was in order. I vaguely remembered an email sent to me before delivery from a fellow quad mama about how to get them to sleep through the night using Babywise. I pulled it up for reference and realized that we 1. needed to keep them on a three hour feed schedule in the day to keep them sustained through the night 2. needed to turn our baby monitors off. Say what? Turn the baby monitor off??? We did! The thing is baby monitors pick up EVERY little movement and grunt all night long. I would find myself stumbling out of bed at 4:00-5:00 am to feed one baby that was grunting and waking three sleeping babies up to keep them on the same schedule. Also, when we turned the monitors off, we realized we CAN hear when they cry and if a SIDS monitor alarms. Even with implementing these things, we continued to wake every morning at 5:00 am and this just wasn’t working. So, I picked up a copy of Babywise at Half Price Books to learn the whole program for myself.

I read it cover to cover last Tuesday and began full implementation on Thursday. I quickly realized that Harper’s circadian rhythm was “stuck” to wake at about 5:00 am and he wasn’t really hungry. When he’d wake up, bleary eyed me would heat four bottles and wake the other three to feed. I knew that if he could sleep until 5:00 am, that 6:00 wasn’t too lofty of a goal. So, I set the expectation to feed starting at 6:00 or later. After three days of convincing Harper to go back to sleep, he finally agreed. I am proud to say all four have slept from 11 pm to 7:30 am! I don’t mean we fed them at 11 either, they SLEPT from 11 pm to 7:30 am. That is a FULL night’s sleep for us!
We have a few other kinks of Babywise to work out, but sleeping a full night is absolute

ly fantastic. The Babywise theory is that babies have a cycle of feed-wake-sleep and they move through these cycles in that order all day long. Also, babies must sleep in their cribs in their rooms anytime they go into sleep cycles, not contraptions. (We still rely upon the Rock ‘n’ Plays for sleep because they keep the babies upright helping prevent reflux spells.) This teaches them to fall asleep independently. If they get these cycles out of order, things get disrupted for them. Right now we are struggling to keep them awake for the entire feed and to stay awake before a nap. They tend to fall asleep too soon and wake long before it is time to feed. Right now, Rylin is particularly upset with the new routine. She prefers to eat in her sleep and during “playtime” then wakes up like a banshee about an hour before the next feed. I am sticking with it in hopes that we will teach the babies where and how to sleep so everyone is more rested. Here’s to wisin’ up!

hugs!

Amber

Cue the pictures of sleeping babies-