What was the book on sleep strategies? Or was that just for babies?

Yay for a more settled Sofia. Just wait until she is a teenager…then she’ll do things like my baby is doing…designing and making 80 cm high stilts and striding around the neighbourhood! (as if being 183 cms wasn’t already tall enough!)

Funny, it was only yesterday that I saw that you were also at the Brimbank Festival. I’m really looking forward to the storywriting sessions. Thanks for pointing people to the workshop, and linking to my website. I’m going to update that part of my blog soon and will add you.

Claire

I’m really happy with the workshop. I prepared, I practiced and I had a great time. Got a talk tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.

Thankfully she only cried that much the first night and it was more that we were giving her mixed messages. We were paying attention to when she was tired and worked out she needs 3 naps a day and each time we put her down for a nap she cried, but by the end of the 2nd day she’s be asleep within 5 minutes. The second night she cried a little bit, and the third night she was out straight away.

But I’m also not going to be merciless about this routine. This morning she woke up at 5 am. I tucked her in and waited 5 minutes and she still sounded hungry so I fed her, spent a few minutes with her and put her back in bed. She slept until 7 and now she’s up and will be awake until 9 am, when her first nap is due. And I’m sure within a month she’ll drop one nap.

Now when we put her to bed and do our bedtime ritual she smiles and is asleep within a few minutes. Such a relief. But I also agree that each kid is different and you have to try different things and see what works. When she’s teething and been unsettled I’ve had her with me in bed and will keep doing that.

I see you have a workshop too in the Brimbank Festival. I was telling a friend who’s son is a very talented writer and will be passing on the word to a few other friends who have kids the right age. And I also just realised I haven’t linked to your website so will do that now.

Cheers

Amra

One: A certain amount of anxiety before a presentation/workshop/whatever is actually a good thing. It means you’ve prepared and you’re running on high energy. Only when it affects your delivery can it be a bad thing.

Two: Re Sofia. And I hesitate, coz it’s different for everyone. By baby three here we were way too tired to be able to do the controlled crying thing…or any other thing supposed to make our life easier that involved hearing a baby cry. We had him in bed with us. We went to sleep in his bed when telling him stories (read: trying to read him to sleep). We moved over and let him into our bed when he woke up in the night, one of us going into his bed. We all got more sleep that way.

And, some years on, he is the most well adjusted of teenagers, confident in himself and very independent. Is there a link? Who knows? All I know is it was easier for us in the long term. And although at the time it seemed endless, it did end.

Claire