Thursday, January 3, 2013

30 Days in a Rock n Play: Fighting the Sleep Battle

As I've said before, sleep was a nightmare when the boys first came home from the hospital. They wouldn't sleep in their cribs or in the pack n play, and so my husband and I switched off sleeping for the first 2.5 weeks, plus we had family and friends helping us out almost constantly.

At 2.5 weeks, my Fisher Price Rock n Play sleepers arrived from Amazon. I'd read reviews calling these things miracles and "must-haves", but I was reserving my judgement until I tried them out for myself. But, thankfully, the reviews did not disappoint. On the first night we tried them, the boys, who had previously almost refused to sleep on anything but a person, fell asleep almost instantly in them and slept for hours.

I figured it surely was a fluke; this couldn't last. But it did. The boys would sleep in the Rock n Plays every night. Usually they fell asleep quite quickly, especially once we started giving them a bigger bottle before bedtime. They were routinely sleeping 3-4 hour stretches, and it usually wasn't a tremendous struggle to get them back down once they were fed (although we of course had our occasional 3 am scream fests). If they had trouble going down, giving them their pacifiers, rocking them, or placing a hand on their chests, hands, or back usually did the trick. There's even a nice little ridge at the head of the Rock n Play where we keep their pacifiers for easy access.

Malcolm in his swaddle
On Night #20, Brendan was really difficult to put down, so I decided to attempt swaddling again (we stopped early on because they really seemed to hate it). I used the Summer SwaddleMe Blanket, and what do you know? The darned kid slept for almost 6 hours straight. After that night, we started swaddling both of them every night, and even their least sleepy night since was still around 5 hours. Routinely, they're sleeping 6-7 hours a night. I'm stunned.

While obviously our babies just have good sleeping genes, and not all babies will sleep through the night if you do the exact same things we did, I attribute their success to a few key tools and elements of our nightly routine. In addition to the two most important tools listed above (the swaddlers and the Rock n Plays), I'd say that getting them nice and full before bed has helped. We have to supplement my pumped milk with a few ounces of formula per day anyway, so we've been giving them that little bit of formula with their bedtime feeding. Formula metabolizes more slowly, so they take longer to get hungry again. I'd also say that keeping the nighttime feeding dark and quiet has helped, but they might not even notice that yet. The boys also seem to sleep best when they're put down between 11pm and 12am. Our shorter sleeping nights tend to be when they're put down after 1am.

Brendan giving a fist of approval
I recently recommended the Rock n Play to a friend whose daughter is 2.5 weeks younger than our boys. After one night in it, she texted me and was singing the sleeper's praises. She'd been using a co-sleeper, but they got longer stretches almost instantly with the Rock n Play. It seems that most people really have great results, as it has excellent reviews on Amazon.

The only negative I've heard about the Rock n Play is that some people blame it for giving their kid flat spots on their head. I just try to hold the boys more during the day to counteract the harder surface of the Rock n Play. I also plan to just have my pediatrician pay extra attention to their heads at monthly appointments, and hopefully it'll all be just fine. I also plan to move them to their cribs around 3 months, so that might help. I know that Fisher Price makes a more "deluxe" version of the Rock n Play with more head padding if the flat spot thing spooks you though. For me, the extra padding actually just makes me nervous about other things like SIDs, so I stuck with the basic one.

Overall, we've been very blessed in the sleep department, and I thank my lucky stars. I cannot sing the Rock n Play's praises enough. It will be my go-to shower gift from now on regardless of whether the person is registered for it or not! If you're about to fall over from weeks of screaming babies at 3am, I highly recommend this purchase.

A chart of their sleep progress over 30 nights in their Rock n Plays. This charts their first period of sleep in each night. Night #21 was the first night when they both wore swaddles.

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