Sleeping Hard or Hardly Sleeping

Ignoring the RULES and sleeping sunny-side down

I don't remember sleep being this hard. I don't think it should be, although I remember it taking FORever to fall asleep when I was a kid. Now, I'm out like a light, usually. Ellie on the other hand, has a LOT to learn. If it wasn't enough that we were struggling with catnaps, now she's rolling when I put her down. It's like it's physically impossible for her NOT to roll. The only times she's fallen asleep on her back lately are when she falls asleep nursing and that's how I put her down, or when she is just too exhausted to fully roll. Then, she ends up on her left side and only makes the full roll when she wakes up reenergized. My current strategy is to keep flipping her back onto her back (even though that seems to piss her off even more than being on her tummy) until she either falls asleep on her back or side or stops fussing on her belly. Usually, she'll only stop fussing when she abruptly passes out. That's how she slept on her tummy the first time. We went round and round flipping and crying for the better part of an hour before I was startled to hear silence. When I checked the monitor, she appeared to be asleep face down. I went in to check that she'd turned her head and could breathe, and then I decided to leave her alone. She slept 2 hours that time. Mostly, she seems to sleep better (longer) on her tummy and I am comfortable that she's strong enough to turn her head if breathing becomes an issue. However, she can't roll back over yet, so that does concern me. But, I'm convinced that her risk for SIDS is pretty insignificant even on her tummy. I'll still lay her down on her back, but we'll take sleep how ever she can get it.

Speaking of getting sleep, we had a new personal best yesterday. Ellie napped in the morning for 2 hours and 23 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I was minutes from waking her up since I had to be somewhere, but she ended up waking on her own – greatly refreshed, I might add.

I've started the nap book and discovered that the catnap problem is called One Cycle Sleep Syndrome (OCSS). That's when a child sleeps for 30-50 minutes and then wakes up when their sleep cycle changes. That explains why most of the time when I nurse her after she wakes up she'll go back to sleep for another hour or more, usually. That's about all the useful info I've gathered though. The "tips" look fairly useless. I'm gonna go back over the chapter, but it sounds like I'm gonna have to let her grow out of it, let her cry, or spend every waking moment coddling her to sleep. Bah!