pod ep26 week 4 with Hank
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[00:00:00] Welcome to this sleep by Alex podcast. I am a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of three, and I will be bringing you quick science backed sleep advice to get you and your baby or a toddler sleeping well Hi everyone. We are back with week four with my little guy.
Aw. I feel like he's already growing so much and getting so big. It is very, very bittersweet. I'm so sad for this to be the last like newborn period. I get to experience with my own babies, but I have to keep reminding myself about this like new chapter and new phase of life we're moving into, which is also really exciting.
As much as I'm going to be so sad when the baby and toddler phase is over, I'm also looking forward to all the fun and exciting things that happen when your kids are older.
And in this next year we're gonna be moving to a new house and a new town, and our kids will start new schools and we're going to be moving out of this, you know, having babies stage. And I am trying to remind [00:01:00] myself that there are exciting and fun and special things to come at every age and stage.
I am feeling really good as well. This postpartum period. I feel like this. Postpartum period has been a thousand times better than my third baby the last time. And I think the main difference is, first of all, I know he's my last. So I am really just like soaking in every single moment
and even the hard moments. I try not to get too frustrated because I know that future me is gonna look back and be like, I wish I just kind of enjoyed it a little bit more. So I'm trying to just enjoy the ups and the downs. And also I made it very clear this time around I needed a ton of support. I didn't really get to have this like newborn bubble with my last baby, where I sort of laid on the couch or laid in bed with him all day long.
And this time around I knew I needed that at least for a few weeks with Hank. And it has so changed my [00:02:00] experience, just being able to like slowly reenter into life. Now I do have three older kids, so it's not as slow, of course, as if you just have one or two kids. Like we still had sports and dance and school to get to, but I've had so much help.
I haven't had to tackle everything all day long since he was born all by myself. So. That has helped exponentially with my physical, emotional, mental wellbeing, this sort of fourth trimester. I know it's not easy asking for help and asking for what you need, and I'm usually the one to say like, no, it's fine.
I'll be fine. Which is what I did last time, and then I So wasn't fine. So this is just your sign too. Even if it's hard, if you're somebody like me, even if you feel like you're sort of a go-getter and you can do it all and it's all good and you can handle it, we know you can handle it. And also ask for the help and set up the help beforehand because even if you can handle [00:03:00] it, it's gonna be such a better experience if you can have as much hands-on support as you can possibly get.
So week four with Hank, I'm really starting to get to know his patterns. He's becoming more and more predictable as far as how he's sleeping. For the most part,
he often fights his naps in the morning, so his morning naps, if I'm trying to lay him down or something, he takes a long time to fall asleep or he won't stay asleep, and he fights his naps and he'll get cranky if I don't just like throw him in the wrap and have him take a nap in there. But then by the middle of the day, like 12 ish, one o'clock, he is out.
That's when heaps the most solid.
As far as nighttime goes, he is still going to bed between around eight and nine o'clock, and then he usually wakes up around midnight to feed around three o'clock to feed, and then again at like five or five 30, and then he'll sleep until between seven and eight o'clock. So it's usually like three and a half hours between the first [00:04:00] couple feedings and then closer to two and a half or two for those sort of early morning feedings.
Actually the last night of his fourth week, he did his first four and a half hour stretch between feedings instead of three, three and a half hours, which was amazing. So I'm starting to see little winds here and there where nighttime sleep is extending a little bit.
, he is definitely more awake now, so he's having many more wake windows that I'm noticing. I am officially, as of this week, needing to be more mindful about helping him get down for a nap when it's the end of his wake window. So for the first few weeks. He was super sleepy and while he had some wake windows here and there and I could notice that they were, you know, 45 to 60 minutes long, he kind of just dozed off whenever, and I didn't necessarily have to keep track of how long he was awake and then try and rock him to sleep at the end of his wake window before he got over tired.
Like that just wasn't a thing I had to worry about. And I [00:05:00] noticed in this last week, he is more awake, he's more alert. He's looking around at his siblings. He is, you know, a little more stimulated by his environment, which means he's not necessarily just dozing off at the end of the wake window.
Now it sort of takes some mindful effort for me to see how long he's been awake and when I notice that, you know, it's been that 45 to 60 minutes and I see he's getting sleepy, then I will. Put in the time to rock him to sleep or put him in the carrier or whatever to make sure that he falls asleep before he gets overtired.
That's gonna make it a lot easier for you to get your baby to sleep and help them stay asleep if they're down before they get overtired. So this is definitely the first week. I've had to be more mindful about that.
So, because I have four kids and I'm busy and I have a lot to keep track of, sort of all over the place. I have just this week started using an app that I can just like. Mark when he fell asleep and when he woke up, just because it's hard for me [00:06:00] to remember it all. So I don't think at this point it's a big deal to track every single minute your baby's awake and every minute they're asleep.
And I don't want you to get too hung up on tracking every single little bit of your baby's sleep because it can definitely stress you out. But it can be convenient just to keep track of throughout the day. Like I just pop in the app and say he woke up, and then it's nice for me to check on it and be like, what time did he wake up again?
How long has he been awake? Um, so I just started doing that this week just so I can keep track of how long he has been awake and when he should probably go down for a nap. Now that I'm needing to be a little bit more mindful about that. I am also needing to be more mindful about helping him extend his naps.
So that app has been helpful for that as well, because I can see pop in there and see exactly how long he's been sleeping because once again, I have a lot going on, so I'll lose track of time. Was he asleep? 20 minutes? Was he asleep? An hour? Like I don't remember at this point.
So if I am not mindful about helping him extend his [00:07:00] naps, what tends to happen is he might doze off for 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and then this sort of leads to him getting really cranky and fussy because he's just not getting like a solid sleep. And now that he's awake more, once he's had these little micro naps, he can't.
Stay awake for 45 to 60 minutes, and then he's just getting cranky as time goes on. So I'm trying to be more aware of how long he's actually napped. Now, when it comes to extending newborn naps, they're not expected to nap, you know, for one to two hours on their own, and they're bassinet or anything like that.
They're definitely going to need some help from you. But the goal of an app in an ideal world is. One to two hours-ish at least an hour is a nice restorative nap. So if your newborn naps for less than an hour, let's say they wake up 20 minutes, 30 minutes into their nap, what you can do is spend at least 10 to 15 minutes [00:08:00] seeing if you can get them back to sleep.
So whether that means you're sitting with them and rocking them, or you just pick them up as you're walking around the house or you decide to throw them in the stroller, or you throw them in the carrier or wrap. Whatever you need to do to give them some time to try and extend their nap before we just call it the end of their nap and start their wake window.
The more you do this and the more you help your baby sleep at least an hour at a time. The more their body is going to be used to that sort of rhythm and routine, and it's going to be so much easier to get those lengthened naps independently in the future. Right now it's really normal that he needs my help to extend his naps.
I'm not going to expect him to sleep at least an hour on his own when I lay him down until he is at least like five months old and that's if I sleep train at four or five months. He needs my help right now if he wakes up from a short nap to get back to sleep, so that's what I'm doing.
If he wakes up and it hasn't been at least an hour, I will put him in the carrier or I'll spend some time walking around [00:09:00] with him or rocking him just to help him fall back asleep and most of the time he will fall back asleep.
This makes our days go so much smoother because he doesn't get overtired and cranky, and he sleeps better at night if he gets better Daytime sleep.
If you're curious about the app I use to track his sleep, I just use one called Baby Tracker. It's the same app I use to track his feedings as well, so it's easy for me to pop in there. Track his naps there.
So this week, not too much change to his sleep. The only thing that's looking a little different is he's definitely awake throughout the day, and I'm needed to really keep track of how long he's awake and getting him down for a [00:10:00] nap before he gets overtired. In addition to helping him extend his naps if needed,
Those two things are like the two most important things at this stage. Besides making sure he's eating enough to help with nighttime sleep. I know it feels like, why do I have to worry so much about what's going on during the day? Shouldn't I be working on extending nighttime sleep by implementing something at night?
But really, all of these things you do during the day are going to help set your baby up for success at night.
While all of these daytime strategies are really important when it comes to night sleep. In next week's episode, I am going to dive into a couple things I do in the middle of the night to help extend his nighttime sleep now that he's getting a little bit older. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast and stick around for next week's episode if you want to hear things I'm doing in the middle of the night to help extend his sleep a little bit.
If you want to learn about everything I'm implementing with him day and night, then head to the show notes. I've linked my first four months [00:11:00] guide that lays out every single thing that I am implementing with Hank to get the most sleep possible.
You can always join the Sleep by Alex membership as well instead of just downloading the guide and you'll access the guide as a member. It's all included in the membership, so if you wanna ask me questions and attend live calls, you can get some individualized advice along with downloading the guide.
Then I suggest you just join the membership instead because you'll access the guide and the course and everything there as well. Okay, everyone, thanks for listening and I'll chat to you next week.
