Sleep Training Revisited

Dear Isabelle,

We went to see Marilee Hartling, RN, MFT, who is an early childhood behaviorist, in regards to your sleep issues. We started off your sleep training with great success but have now seen some regression. You are now up 4 to 6 times a night needing Mommy or Daddy to pop the soother back into your mouth or to rescue you and flip you back over to your back. You are able to roll over both ways but only in one direction right now. So when you flip from back to tummy, you get stuck because you've hit the side of the crib. Hopefully, you'll learn to roll the other direction too, that way, you can help yourself!

Marilee described you as precocious and very alert and she's not surprised that you've regressed. She says it's because you are so active and are probably practicing your new motor skills when you wake from REM sleep. And after all that practicing, it's hard for you to fall back asleep yourself and you need help from Mommy and Daddy. She also advised Mommy to resume your nightly feeding because you might also be waking due to hunger. Even though Dr. Scott said that physically, 4 month old babies should be able to go without calories for 10 hours at night, Marilee said that, in your case, you might have Mommy's high metabolism and in addition to your hyperactiveness, you need that extra feeding in the night.

So her solutions for us are:

• to be patient as this period shall pass but will also return when you develop another new skill
• to add a night feeding
• to teach you to pop the soother back into your mouth yourself

On the cute side, at the beginning of our consultation, you were looking at Mommy for comfort because you were in the presence of a stranger. After Mommy reassured you, you started interacting and smiling with Marilee. You were also rolling, rolling and rollling all around the mat...little show off!

Love, Mom

Your eyes are always big and open like that!!!