When a baby sleeps through the night

Now our baby Jack seems to be sleeping through the night - he is now 10 weeks old and I have to say for the first six weeks I could never see the day when he would sleep though the night... well he has done so for the last three nights, so fingers crossed this is a sign that this is going to be a normal pattern..

His pattern now is a feed at 9ish then at midnight and then he sleeps through till about 7am in the morning.. the question now is can we manipulate his evening feeds, so we can start feeding him earlier at say 10pm and then get him to go through the night?

It seems from this chart that most experts feel that you shouldn't skip that feed until he's three months old.. so we have a few more weeks to go yet.

We are considering putting him onto the Gina Ford the contented baby system - but we haven't finally decided yet.

Now we have a CD that plays a vacuum cleaner sound

I don't think I'd ever have believed that we would buy a CD that just plays the noise of a vacuum cleaner, but we have and it works a treat and soothing Jack in the evening and sends him asleep....

It's called a baby vacuum cleaner..... and all it plays is the sound of a vacuum cleaner continuously and for this work of art we paid a whopping great £7.50... but as Charlie says its worth it for an evening without Jack crying. I think it must be just "white noise"... but it does seem an easy money-making venture to me.

A hairdryer and the famous

Just thinking about Jack being soothed by a running hairdryer in his room.... and it reminded me that I'm sure I'd heard a story about Wayne Rooney only being able to get to sleep when a vacuum cleaner was running in his room.... and a quick search revealed I was right with this story on Yahoo!

The first eight weeks - how has it been for us

A first-time-dad's account of the first eight weeks of our baby Jack's first eight weeks.

It's hard to distill it all to make sense, suffice to say that while you may not think that you'll ever get a good night's sleep again during the first six weeks of your baby's life... it does as everyone will tell you get better.

I remember the first four weeks, being absolutely exhausting not just because of the lack of sleep, but also as having a new baby for the first time is a stressful experience.

Having talked to friends and family, it's also true that every baby is different. We have probably had it quite easy with Jack, but there have been times when we have been at the end of our tether too, so if you get there, then you are in the same place as many, many other first-time parents.

A quick resume for us would be:

0-14 days - Jack slept a lot, but not at the same time as us.... so we were up a lot at night, probably feeding every two to three hours. This is hard work and your baby seems very fragile.

14-28 days - We were starting to get Jack used to when night and day was, but he didnt want to sleep unless he was cuddled... he was like this up to six weeks old really. However he was feeding better and drinking more... Jack was being breastfed at and Charlie was expressing her milk as well, so I could help out with some feeds. He would still need at least one to two feeds a night. In express milk terms he would have about 30ml in a feed - not a lot.

28 days to six weeks - this was over Christmas for us and Jack definitely started to understand the difference between night and day. He was sleeping better at night, although he was still going to sleep most times when he was held. This is the stage when for us every time he sensed he was near his moses basket and being put down he would scream.... this meant a lot of rocking and singing to get him into a deep sleep so we could get put him down. A lot of the books tell you not to let him fall asleep in your arms and if you can avoid it, then it's worth it, but in our experience this wasn't going to happen.

For us, Jack was being fed primarily by formula and he was staring to drink more - about 60-70ml of milk a feed, but he was still quite small, about 10lbs.

Towards the end of this period we started to feel that he was sleeping better at night - sometimes he would go for a five hour stretch in one go... brilliant. However, he was starting to show signs of collic..... normally in the evening at about 8pm till 11pm. During this time, he would howl and he was hard to find ways to stop him.

So we were getting a better night's sleep, but dreading the evenings, when dinner would normally mean passing Jack from one another around the table as he cried.

Six to eight weeks old - Jack was sleeping better at night, and was generally happy during the day. He started to smile at us... at about four to five weeks. Collic like symptoms still evident at evening time, but we decided it was time to put him down after his bath and feed in the evening at about 7pm.... to start he hated it. We would spend one to two hours singing and rocking him, before he would tire himself out with crying ......and fall asleep.

THEN we found the secret of the hair dryer........ if we put Jack down and put Charlie's hair dryer on he would settle and sleep. It was amazing. He had the odd blip, but generally it worked really well.

He was now starting to eat over 30 oz of milk a day.. and feeding about six to seven times a day. Normally he would have a dream feed - one when he was still just about asleep at about 11pm. In this feed we would try not to wake him at all, so he would only have his nappy changed if he needed it and probably wouldn't need burping... why because when they take a bottle when nearly asleep they don't take in hardly any air.... He would then wake again between 3am and 4am. This was pretty good.....

And so we are roughly where we are now... he's still on a true "Gina Ford" style routine, but a three-hour feed rota as the "baby whisper" recommends and it seems to be working pretty well and we now more relaxed as we get a good break in the evening to have our meal and watch a bit of telly.. what a treat!

He is still sleeping in his basket in out room and the next step is to move him to his own room in the next week.

and so a hairdryer is giving us some piece and quiet

Yep.. you wouldn't believe it, but while this first-time dad was doing some surfing about colic and baby health I found somewhere that said try running a vacuum cleaner to soothe your baby, the low-level humm might help.

Sure enough we tried a hair dryer and yes it has worked pretty well and certainly seems to soothe Jack when he gets irritable in the evening...so far so good.

Of course, he still knows his moments to play up and when his godmother Tamsin came round the other night, he decided it was time to take no notice of the hair dryer and screamm his little head off... and hence dinner was a slightly truncated affair..

Baby colic .. and Jack's evening cry

You can't quite see it, but Jack's sleep suit is embossed with the words I'm loud and I'm proud.... this has been very appropriate for him in the past few nights.
He is now nearly seven weeks old, but he seems to have a very grissly evening slot when he shouts the house down and nothing you do can shut him up. Is he colicky?? Eventually he goes to sleep. To be fair he has been sleeping longer through the night - it's just getting there that has been a bit of a struggle...
Any advice then please let us know ... I guess he could have a bit of colic, but that seems to be a fairly unscientific problem with no solution how to cure it.. I've found this article and this one. Hope they help ... for us we'll try anything to soothe home a little, although it does seem that my wife Charlie is far better at this than me.

Jack, Josh and Oliver

Jack, Josh and Oliver
Originally uploaded by joel72.

I think this is the first New Year's Eve when I haven't got absolutely hammered and can actually remember everything.. how times change. Well with a little baby your options are somewhat restricted. So we went over to a friend's house for dinner. We had a great time with them and their little one's and managed to guzzle a couple of bottles of bubbly to celebrate in middle fo the crying!! So here's to a great 2007 and to Jack's new friends Josh and Oliver

Grandma, Jack and his bottle, Sam and Charlie

Grandma, Jack and his bottle, Sam and Charlie
Originally uploaded by joel72.

First-time dads can get really snap happy and I hate to think how many photos we have taken of Jack now.. but they are all worth it. It's like keeping a big diary I guess. I think we have about 60 photos uploaded onto flickr, which is a great website where you can let your friends and family have access to your photos, once you have taken them. We only bought a digital camera about two weeks before Jack was born - definitely worth it if you haven't got one. Particularly as they are so handy and small now that taking them into hospital etc is no hassle and you wouldn'y want to miss the chance of taking those first pics of your little baby.
Anyway must go as ours - now six weeks old - is just waking up. Back to work tomorrow after two weeks off with my wife and son, which has been lovely. We've had a great time and Jack is really changing all the time... it's amazing how fast they do change and I'm lucky to have had the time off work to have witnessed it.