Sleep Evaluation of My 5-Week-Old

Wednesday July 31st, 2019 // After His Bedtime But Before Mine

It’s been a few days since I’ve written and I can feel that writing muscle atrophying. I guess I better break out the old Google Doc and do a little free writing session.

The little guy just went down to sleep. He’s learned this magical thing for the past several nights in a row called 6 hours of consecutive sleep. He was on a routine of feeding around 8:30 PM, then he’d wake up around 1:00 AM – 1:30 AM, then up again around 4:00 AM then up again around 6:30 AM.

Since last Friday or Saturday night (honestly the nights run together at this point…) we’ve put him down around 9:00 PM. Then he wakes up around 3:00 AM. Then around 6:00 AM. He’s cut out one of these overnight/early morning feedings. We aren’t strictly sticking to Babywise but we are following their guidelines loosely. Him being around that 5-6 week age mark is pretty much in line with what Babywise says will happen.

Side note: Our baby monitor is on the coffee table in front of me in my peripheral view. The dog just walked into frame and looked at the camera. You can’t really see her but her eyes look like a ghost or something because of the night vision mode on it. Kinda creepy.

The first night he did this we actually slept less than if he would have just woken up. It was quite comical looking back. He was stirring a bit so my wife woke up at 1:45 AM and then woke me up to ask if I fed him yet. I said no and went back to sleep. I don’t she knew what time it was because at 2:20 AM the same thing happened. He stirred and woke us both us. And she asked again if I had fed thinking that I had already and it was her turn. I said no but we were concerned because he hadn’t slept this long before.

Since he was stirring we figured he’d be waking up fully soon and I’d feed him. So I got his bottle ready and just sat at the end of the bed waiting. Ten minutes passed and he was back asleep. Sigh.

We decided we’d leave him because this is what we actually want and our pediatrician said we can go this long if he’ll let us. So I laid back down until 3:00 AM when he finally woke up. Usually it’s about a 30 minute process from the time he gets up until I’m able to feed, change, and put him back to sleep. This time between all the different wake ups and false alarms… yeah I was considerably more tired the next morning.

We’ll see what tonight holds. I know every night is a crapshoot with a newborn. It’s pretty crazy though that he’s sleeping so long already. Now if only I could force myself to go to sleep at 9:00 PM too then I think my own sleep would be much better off…

Speaking of which, I should probably cut myself off and hit the sack.

– Josh // should be asleep

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