Arrival of first baby gives us new view
By Caitriona Lynch
I still remember the shock of being woken up in the wee hours by the midwife, who held my wailing first-born in her arms, and she wanted me to do something about it.
Slowly it dawned on me. This was it. Gone were the lazy hazy crazy nights of full sleep.
On mature reflection my baby was a good baby and mostly only woke to be fed, but of course I couldn’t compare and was convinced that I had gotten the worst part.
I remember, after 10 weeks, talking to a lady who had 7 kids (I wondered what kind of nut job would go through this torture 7 times) and asking her advice.
She clearly missed the whole point of the question. She gave me a lot of ideas on how to comfort the baby, and lots of suggestions on how to cope with lack of sleep.
But she never gave me the answer to the burning question: How do I get the child to stop waking me up?
Now that I can attest to being one of those nut jobs who went through it 7 times, let me share some thoughts on coping with night feeds etc.
1. Adjust your thinking. Your baby is not being bold, nor are you being cursed. Babies need to be fed every few hours, they’re hungry. However there are steps you can take to ensure they wake up for a feed and nothing else.
2. Babies don’t know the difference between day and night. You need to do things differently at the night feed to wake them up as little as possible. The idea is pick them up, feed, burp, back to bed.
3. Shoot me if you like, but in my opinion there is no need to change an infant’s nappy in the middle of the night. It only wakes them up.
Any way their outputs are so tiny at this stage the risk of rash etc is virtually non-existent.
4. Don’t turn on any lights. Use a dimmer switch or a torch. Don’t chat or talk.
5. Depending on the time of year lay a heat app blanket over your baby when you put him or her down to sleep. You can roll him up in this as you lift him out and into his bed and he experiences no drop in temp which could wake him up.
6. As soon as he is finished feeding put him straight back into his own bed. You are not being cruel and ignoring his needs for cuddles. You will give him loads of that in the morning.
Right now you are teaching him that there is a time and a place for everything, and bedtime is not the time. Anyway, you need your sleep even if he or she doesn’t.
I still remember the shock of being woken up in the wee hours by the midwife, who held my wailing first-born in her arms, and she wanted me to do something about it.
Slowly it dawned on me. This was it. Gone were the lazy hazy crazy nights of full sleep.
On mature reflection my baby was a good baby and mostly only woke to be fed, but of course I couldn’t compare and was convinced that I had gotten the worst part.
I remember, after 10 weeks, talking to a lady who had 7 kids (I wondered what kind of nut job would go through this torture 7 times) and asking her advice.
She clearly missed the whole point of the question. She gave me a lot of ideas on how to comfort the baby, and lots of suggestions on how to cope with lack of sleep.
But she never gave me the answer to the burning question: How do I get the child to stop waking me up?
Now that I can attest to being one of those nut jobs who went through it 7 times, let me share some thoughts on coping with night feeds etc.
1. Adjust your thinking. Your baby is not being bold, nor are you being cursed. Babies need to be fed every few hours, they’re hungry. However there are steps you can take to ensure they wake up for a feed and nothing else.
2. Babies don’t know the difference between day and night. You need to do things differently at the night feed to wake them up as little as possible. The idea is pick them up, feed, burp, back to bed.
3. Shoot me if you like, but in my opinion there is no need to change an infant’s nappy in the middle of the night. It only wakes them up.
Any way their outputs are so tiny at this stage the risk of rash etc is virtually non-existent.
4. Don’t turn on any lights. Use a dimmer switch or a torch. Don’t chat or talk.
5. Depending on the time of year lay a heat app blanket over your baby when you put him or her down to sleep. You can roll him up in this as you lift him out and into his bed and he experiences no drop in temp which could wake him up.
6. As soon as he is finished feeding put him straight back into his own bed. You are not being cruel and ignoring his needs for cuddles. You will give him loads of that in the morning.
Right now you are teaching him that there is a time and a place for everything, and bedtime is not the time. Anyway, you need your sleep even if he or she doesn’t.
