How Not To Be "Up All Night"

Will you be watching NBC's hit show Up All Night when it moves to Thursdays this week? I will be--the Will Arnett-Christina Applegate-Maya Rudolph combo is pretty hard to beat (and the rarely-seen baby is pretty cute, too).

Cute babies with night-owl tendancies may be funny on TV, but nobody wants to find themselves starring in a real-life version. If you like the show but you don't want to be up all night, every night, check out my article in this month's Calgary's Child Magazine about "How Not To Be Up All Night." (Hint: It's all about finding your baby's sleep number, embracing boring, and working your best light.)

Guest Post: A New Mom's Sleep Glossary

In the world full of mom bloggers, my friend and fellow writer Abigail Green is a rare find: An accomplished journalist who is also a brilliant essayist. Trust me, her writing is as hilarious as it is sincere. Her popular blog Abby Off The Record tracks the growth of her two active boys, but many new readers may not know that Abby has been sharing the ups and downs of new parenthood for ages (since 2005, to be exact).

Luckily, Abby's newly-released ebook Mama Insider: Laughing (And Sometimes Crying) All the Way Through Pregnancy, Birth, and the First 3 Months gives readers a glimpse of Abby's journey into mamahood. It's chock-full of insights and observations for nearly-moms and newbie-moms, and it's guaranteed to make you see the lighter side of things--even when you're sleep deprived.

Here's an exerpt from the ebook. Want more? Here's where you can buy the full version.

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Sleep Glossary: From Nap Trap to Sleep Slut  

By Abigail Green      

If there’s one thing new moms are obsessed with besides their babies, it’s sleep. Who’s getting it, who’s not, when, where, and how often becomes a huge topic when you’re a parent.

When my first child was born, I was devastated to discover that I—a lifelong champion nighttime sleeper—was not capable of napping during the day. So during my many, many waking hours, I would chart my son’s sleep habits in a little notebook. I think I was hoping for a predictable pattern. Or maybe I was just insane from lack of sleep.

Anyway, charts and graphs made no difference. He would take a random three-hour nap one day, and the next day—even though he got up at 5 a.m. —he’d only sleep for an hour. I would have been better off spending my time thinking up entries for my Sleep Glossary. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Nap trap: When the baby falls asleep in the car and you can’t decide whether to risk transferring him to the crib or stay in the car until he wakes up.

Sleep peep: When you or your over-anxious mother wants to go into the sleeping baby’s room “just to check on him.” Don’t do it. Leave well enough alone.

Snooze sham: 1. When you lie to other people about how long your baby’s been sleeping through the night. (Note: It doesn’t make you seem like a better parent, it just makes other, more sleep-deprived parents want to kill you.)  2. When you pretend you’re sleeping so your spouse has to go tend to the baby.

Abigail Green, authorSleep debt: When your spouse owes you a period of uninterrupted sleep in exchange for you getting up with the baby in the middle of the night.

Slumber splurge: When you sleep for obscene lengths of time when someone else is taking care of the baby.

Sleep slut: Someone who will sleep anytime, anywhere they get the chance—even if it means skipping church, sleeping on a bed with no sheets, or sleeping in when it’s their spouse’s turn.

Ask Malia: Help for a 45-minute napper

My daughter is on school break and I'm swamped in holiday to-dos, so I'm working a light schedule this week. Please enjoy this post from my ProSquad archives at ParentingSquad.com. (I'm their resident sleep pro.) And happy holidays to all!

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Malia, My baby only naps for 45 minute at a time. Is there anything I can do to get her to sleep longer?

You’re not alone. Legions of new parents find that they can't squeeze in a load of dishes—forget about a shower or a cup of tea—during their baby’s brief siestas.

Factors that contribute to shorter-than-ideal naps are development, timing, and temperament.

First, consider your child’s age: Short naps are highly common in the first few months of life. Longer naps often develop around 4-6 months of age as sleeping patterns begin to mature.

Second, take a look at nap timing. Short naps may signal that your baby is ready to be awake for longer stretches during the day. Increase the interval of wakefulness before the nap by 10-15 minutes per day until nap length improves.

The final factor is temperament: Some babies are simply short nappers (though most will begin snoozing for longer stretches before age 2).

If your 45-minute napper seems relatively happy during the day and sleeps well at night, stop fretting over nap length. Instead, help ensure that short naps are restorative by maintaining consistent naptimes and a cool, dark, quiet sleeping space. A short nap is better than no nap: This new study shows that naps improve learning and help babies retain new information.

See more of my ProSquad responses here:

Help for a child who wakes up grumpy

Help for difficult bedtimes

Ask Malia: Sleep Sleuthing and The Case of the Three-Hour Nap

Sometimes, figuring out a sleep problem feels a bit like detective work. Recently, the mom of a toddler contacted me for help getting rid of her son's pacifier, which she believed was causing him to wake during the night. But when we looked into the issue, we discovered that the pacifier wasn't the real problem. Read on...

Hi Malia,

My son is 17 months old, and he started sleeping through the night around 13 months. Within the last month, he’s been waking up about 2 am (6 hours after his bedtime.) Sometimes it seems as if he's in the middle of a dream; he will stand up in his crib and cry an unusual cry. Depending on how tired I am, I'll bring him in bed with me, which sometimes works and other times he just plays with my face. We have not taken away his pacifier yet, which is our New Years resolution, as it seems to be giving him more grief than pleasure lately. He needs it to fall asleep, but he'll take it out sometime during his sleep and when he wakes up in the night to put it back in, he can't find it. He never uses it during his waking hours. What is your recommendation on weaning him off the pacifier?

He naps between 1-3 hours during the day and sleeps about 11 hours at night. We kept the pacifier around this long because it helped him sleep before, but now with another baby due in May, I would like him away from this habit before it comes really hard!

Beth

Hi Beth,

Most kids are overtired, so when I'm looking for a reason for nighttime wakings I consider overtiredness first. However, the patterns he's displaying with his night wakings don't suggest that he's overtired, they suggests that he's undertired.

And I don’t think the pacifier is the problem. You can get rid of it if you choose, but I doubt that doing so will stop his nighttime wakings right now.

The thing that I'm honing in on is his naptime: you said he sleeps between 1 and 3 hours. That's a big variation in nap length. At this age, length and quality of nap can be a big factor in nighttime sleep, and it's important for naps to be consistent. That sometimes means waking your child from his nap to make sure he doesn't sleep too long.

Have you noticed a difference in the quality of his nighttime sleep when he takes a 3 hour nap? It's rare for a child to regularly take a 3 hour nap without it affecting their nighttime sleep. 3 hours is a very long nap, and in many cases, it's just too much daytime sleep.

If he's doing well on 11 hours of sleep at night, I would keep his bedtime and wake-up time the same. What I recommend is trying to keep his naptime consistent and waking him after 2 hours maximum.

After a few days of that, if he's still waking at night, I would reduce the nap to 1.5 hours.

The key is to encourage a nap that's restorative but not overly long, and to keep it very consistent.

It sounds like you're on the right track in many areas, so once you get the timing figured out, I think things will smooth out with his nighttime sleep.

Lo and behold, Beth did notice a connection between her son's 3 hour naps and his night wakings, and they're on the way to better sleep. Another sleep sleuthing case, solved.

Baby Reese: Night Wakings At 8 Months

My good friend Lynne recently asked for some sleep help for her adorable daughter Reese. It’s a good example of the fact that even good sleepers and babies who need lots of sleep—like little Reese—can have occasional sleep speedbumps.

Hi Malia,

I’m in need of some help. Reese is almost 8 months old and has now started waking at night, after months of sleeping through the night. She usually goes down for the night around 5:30 or 6pm. Her first wake up has been around 2/3am. I typically get up and feed her and put her back down. She then gets up again around 5am. I know she’s not hungry so I just let her fuss for an hour and eventually feed her at 6 and put her down yet again. 

Is there some big growth spurt that happens at 8 months? It’s rough because she’s been sleeping through since 4 months so this is a rude awakening after 4 months of good sleep (for us and her).

Lynne

Hi Lynne,

I'm so sorry things are tough!

My first thought is that perhaps she's transitioning to needing a bit less sleep. She is sleeping a lot—about 15 or 16 hours per day. That’s at the high end of the average for her age range.

Late infancy—around eight to nine months—is an age where sleep can get shaken up. For starters, at the end of the first year, some babies are beginning to need a little less sleep. But since babies in this age group still take two naps during the day, it’s very easy for babies to get too much daytime sleep, which can lead to nighttime wakings.

Between about 8 months and 15 months, babies are in a bit of a sleep limbo—they’re often ready for a bit less daytime sleep, but they still need the two naps. During this tricky time, limiting nap length is the key to successful daytime sleep and solid nighttime sleep.

When babies switch to one nap (around 15 months on average), you can stop worrying so much about limiting nap length so strictly.

For now, if you limit her naps to one hour each and move her bedtime later by half an hour, I'm betting that things will improve. When you move bedtime later, you want to go slowly, like 15 minutes each day, so that you don't create an overtired situation. Babies like Reese who need lots of sleep can be prone to overtiredness too, and that's no fun either.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes!

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Update: Little Reese is now sleeping through the night again. Hooray! And how adorable is this kid?

Baby Reese: A super-cutie who's (usually) a super sleeper, too