Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Ferber sleep update #4 - Hmmm

Well, things went a little... weird last night.

We put Edie to bed a little earlier last night in an attempt to slowly get her back to her old bedtime, pre-daylight savings time. We were supposed to wait 12 minutes before going in to check on her the first time. 12 minutes is a long time and I was nervous. But she cried for 3 minutes. I repeat. Only 3 minutes of crying before falling asleep. I can still hardly believe it.

But the middle of the night was a little different. She cried for a few seconds at 1:30am, but the 3:30 wake-up was a bit of a debacle. She cried off and on for a long time. She'd stop for like 3 whole minutes, which would make me think she was done. Then she'd ramp right back up. Finally she stopped at 11 minutes and 30 seconds; right before I was going in to check. But then my curiosity got the better of me and I went in to see if she had fallen asleep okay. And I found her laying in the corner of the crib, facing the wrong way and face down. She was sleeping soundly, but she's never rolled onto her belly in her sleep before. She's slept on her side pretty regularly, but this was the first time she'd rolled all the way over at night. I realized that this was probably why she'd been crying for so long. It had startled her to roll over and she probably was having a hard time getting back onto her back. Eventually she'd given up and gone back to sleep. I was torn about whether to roll her back over or not at that point. She was soundly back asleep. But it looked sketchy, like she could suffocate like that - her face seemed kind of mashed into the mattress. I made Jeff come and look and he decided to flip her over. So that woke her up, pissed her off and started her crying all over again. She cried on and off for 12 more minutes. Then I think she even cried for a while after that. It was REALLY hard not to go to her more than the once. Then I think she cried for a while again at 5am, but she either fell back asleep in less than 12 minutes or I fell asleep first - which I find hard to believe, but who knows.

So the question is - what do we do if this happens again? I've heard that eventually babies will roll themselves to their bellies to sleep and at this point you don't have to worry about the whole sleeping on their backs thing. As long as you put them down in the first place on their backs, that's all that matters. I think Ann also said that the first few times they do this, it might freak them out, but they'll figure it out soon. So in the meantime, what should we do when she rolls to her belly and cries? We aren't supposed to go in before the allotted time check, so how will we even know if this has happened? Should we have left her sleeping on her belly all smushed up like that? Ugh.

2 comments:

lindsey. said...

That is tough. Marina has not done that yet but I completely understand you being a little freaked out by it. Everything I have read indicates that the SIDS risk is really mostly in the past by the time they reach six months but it still makes me nervous. I think you were right to flip her over but I guess we have to get used to them doing this. Little scary though - don't blame you guys at all for flipping her over. I would have done the same.

Blythe said...

My vote is to let your sleeping baby lie. She's obviously strong enough to raise her head and not suffocate since she can flip over, but there's always that little mom voice in the back of every mom's head saying "but what if she..."