**for the purpose of this thread, if I say "sleeping through the night" I am referring to going to bed in the evening, and waking up every couple of hours to nurse, and going right back to sleep fairly quickly without any alert periods, regardless of how frequent the wakings are.Â
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So, I've heard a couple times that night time sleep and day time sleep are very different kinds of sleep, controlled by different parts of the brain. I've noticed that in myself, that if I go to bed a couple hours earlier than I usually do, even if I'm really tired, my body just won't sleep for more than a couple hours and then I'm WIRED and don't sleep well at night because of that late "nap". I wanted night time sleep, but my body wasn't ready for night time sleep and gave me day time sleep instead!
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So, onto my LO. For his first 2 months, it was as if he only had one kind of sleep. I don't think he had his days and nights switched because it was just 24/7 of a couple hours of sleep, and a couple hours of wake. He'd have a couple 3-4 hour stretches, but I'd get to spend a couple hours awake a couple times a night every single night. Exhausting! During the day, he was the perfect happy baby. He napped well, I could lay him down in bed and he'd nap alone for 2-3 hours. never fussy. If he was crying he was either hungry, needed to burp, needing to be held (if he wasn't already) or ready to sleep. Swaddle him, give him a snuggle, and out within 5 min! The "evening fussies" that most babies have for the "4th trimester"? Non existent.Â
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For his 2 month "birthday" I got the gift of him sleeping through the night till 6am! (not a morning person, but getting a good chunk of sleep and having to get up at 6 is better than sleeping a little later but spending 3 or 4 hours awake in the middle of the night!) Right after that, he's a totally different baby! Not bad, just different, new habits to learn. Not quite as willing to nap in bed alone, but if I get lucky he just might. His personality is the same, still a happy, delightful baby. But, he gets the evening fussies now. Thats the most interesting part. Before the switch flipped and he started sleeping through the night, there was no fussy time. I've always heard of the fussy time occuring right before the first stretch of night time sleep. And since he didn't have one.. he had no fussy time! I never considered how dependent fussy time was on sleep cycles! And the difference in sleep quality.. wow. Especially since I had 2 full months of no difference in his type of sleep, the change was glaring. He got fussy around 5:30ish, so I figured he'd be ready for his last "nap" of the day, and if he was trying to go to bed for the night i'd just wake him up and keep him up an hour or so, then let him go back to bed. So I tried waking him at 7, and spent a good 15 minutes trying to entertain him enough to stay awake and then those little eyes just closed. So I was like, okay. Fine. Go to bed super early. Before, if for whatever reason I decided I needed to wake him up, I woke him up and he'd be awake!Â
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My first 2 babies slept through the night pretty much from birth. So I'm really curious, what would have made baby3 take 2 months to figure it out? From watching the flip switch, basically instantly, its obvious it wasn't just a bad habit that needed "correcting" and there's no way I could have "sleep trained" him to sleep at night. Honestly I don't think there's a darn thing I could have done but wait for his brain wiring to figure it out. Has anyone else had a baby that was slow to figure out the sleep thing? Or perhaps know of any scientific explanation to whats going on in those little baby brains regarding sleep?Â
