hi everyone
Just a recap on day 3 of sleep school at Mitcham Private.
On day 3 of sleep school the nurses start to ask you more questions about what you would do and leave more of the settling to you- so little wonder that husband and I found day 3 challenging.
We managed 2 day sleeps for A – however they were not a straight placed in cot, settle a number of times and A falls asleep.
We had to take A out of his cot after about 40 minutes of trying to settle him in his room- which is to give him a bit of a break and some cuddles with mum and dad.
You always place the baby in the cot awake for sleeps- this way they are able to learn to calm down their bodies and wind them down as best as they can with some assistance from you as required.
We only managed to get A to sleep for about 50 minutes on his 2nd sleep and 1 hour and 30 minutes on his third one.
Our night routine was a bit more difficult, again we had to take him out and re-try again. It took about 1 hour 45 minutes to settle him down for the night. However he didn’t stir until 235am for a feed and then not again til 630am!
Upon reflection during the day, I realised that I may have jumped the gun in getting him up from his afternoon sleep instead of trying to resettle him for another sleep cycle.
The nurses supporting you during resettling tell you to leave the room once it becomes clear that you are in battle with your precious one- which really means when he doesn’t appear to be responding to your helping to self-settle. This is really difficult to do in the moment and I think it will take practise at home for a while for me to be able to discern this much quicker.
Some examples of your baby ‘battling you’ is perhaps him escalating more as you help, wriggling more in his body. Sometimes the crying can also fool you- as a really vocal baby can cry for ages and call out but this doesn’t actually mean that they are not responding and or in distress and need your help.
Day 3 was hard and so I gave myself a nice glass of wine to end the night which helped me sleep better! It was harder because as its day 3 the nurses tend to ask you to think a bit more about how you would respond and ‘what do you think’ or ‘what would you do at home’. This in itself is a challenge because you’re not really used to doing anything apart from what brought you there in the first place and even though it’s the 3rd day, the techniques still seem unclear and it’s always a process of trial and error which has its pros and cons.
Some of the things that made me question the technique was the fact that A’s voice became a bit raspy which to me indicated that he has been crying.. A lot. That made me a bit sad. Some nurses also have different advise to give to you and so sometimes that could be confusing but as all babies are different then you kind of just have try and apply all the different advise and see which one works for you best.
The nurses however do really love babies and seem to sincerely want you and your baby to have a better experience of sleep than when you first got there. Also when you see your baby self-settling, you kind of think ‘oh wow- he can actually do it’ and you become hopeful of what may be.
I’ve really forgotten to take photos of the food but on the whole it’s alright taste wise but the fact that you are served 3 main meals and 2 snacks that you didn’t have to prepare for yourself is amazing! I actually found myself eating a lot more during my stay and to be honest my pants felt a little snug on my last day. 😳😛☺️
Anyways- I’ll update on day 4!
Sleepily yours
Gabrielle
momsofmelbourne 