The day before Luca's 1st birthday, I took her for a check-up with her regular pediatrician. We love, love, love her pediatrician. I wish we had more check-ups with him but right now she is seen so often by her specialists, and cannot receive vaccines, that we have no reason to go to him more often.
Anyways, her pediatrician has such an amazing way with first time parents. He builds up your confidence and takes plenty of time with you. He is patient and always says, "it is such a pleasure being your doctor and remember that I am always here." I always come away with a big smile.
I asked a few questions of him. While her health questions are being addressed regularly by her specialist, normal baby questions had been hanging over my head.
The big thing at the time was sleep. Luca has for the most part been a great sleeper despite all the interruptions she gets. So my question was: what does a 1-year-old sleep schedule normally look like.
He said that a non-medically complicated child, without hospital visits and such, tends to nap a couple times during the day (and that those naptimes vary, as well as how long each nap is). And at night, most kids are asleep by 8 and go until about 6am. But he said, almost all 1-year-olds are waking at least once per night for various reasons.
I was so relieved to hear this answer. Luca goes down by 8, and wakes anywhere from 6:30-7:30am for the day. (Sidenote - awhile ago she was going down slightly after 8 and was waking a ton and impossible to get to go down, but then we moved up the bedtime routine to start at 7 and she must be in her crib before 8, and voila, those issues went bye-bye. I think her window is between 7 and 8 and if we miss it, we all pay for it that night and the following day.)
She takes two naps - one at 10:30 or 11am, and the second is at 3:30 or 4. Each of those naps are about 1 hour in length. And she does wake sometimes at night. Some night she sleeps straight through. Other nights she whines and needs readjustment or new diapers, etc. Once she goes down, we are in and out of her room at least 4 times through the night. We go in at 10 to give a med and stop her feeds, 11 to give more meds and restart her feeds (and do a diaper change), 3am for new food into the feeding bag and a diaper change, and 6am to turn off her feeds for an hour and possibly another diaper change. (I realize she has a LOT of diaper changes. But she is fed continuously which means she pees and poops continuously. If we could get her on a feeding schedule instead of her being fed for 22 hours per day, I think we would have her on a better diaper changing schedule.) But probably 90% of those visits into her room, and even the diaper changes, she sleeps through it all! I always giggle when I am wiping her tush in the dark, lifting her legs, and she is fast asleep!
So that's her sleeping regimen at 1-year of age. What is your baby's sleep schedule like? Do you wish your baby would sleep more or less?
I consider ourselves blessed that she sleeps so well! (Or maybe everyone else's kids sleep better, and I am just naive!)
AM's a pretty good night sleeper too. We usually have her in bed around 7pm (she starts getting sleeping/cranky around 6:30pm) and she doesn't usually wake until about 5:30am. And while 5:30am probably seems way too early for most people, that's the time J and I wake up during the week.
ReplyDeleteAM's not a consistent napper though. We try to get her to nap twice a day and sometimes she does but not always.
Wow, you have a great sleeper if she can sleep through all the changing/feeds! That is so great - especially since sleep must be so important for a special little lady like her :)
ReplyDeleteSophie is not a great sleeper, and it sucks. We have done everything we can possibly think of (that we're comfortable with) but it's still a challenge. Things are slowly getting better, but on a typical night she wakes up and cries probably 3 times. Sometimes I can just pop her paci back in if she can't find it and she'll go back to sleep, other times she's up crying for over an hour. Naps are hit or miss, she has 3 naps a day and sometimes they are crappy and sometimes they are good, no rhyme or reason to them!
But we keep perspective by remembering how lucky we are just to have her in the first place, and all the cuteness during the day helps makes the long nights easier.