Waking up at our house is sometimes a relaxing experience. We often have nice music playing and good smells filling up our home. Other times waking up at HBHQ is the opposite of relaxing. Sometimes there are tears and bad smells.
More often than not Mags wakes up making happy noises and likes to contemplate her day for a few minutes before she busts out of bed. I’m kind of the same way, it takes me a second to wake up. Barry is a combo of both, sometimes relaxing for a second or two and sometimes his feet are already moving before they have hit the floor.
Sydney, on the other hand, the poor, lazy dog, doesn’t get a chance to decided if she is going to wake up slow or get a move on. This is due to the fact that Miss Maggie “I Love My Dog” Miller has decided that spending her first moments after waking with Syd are a great way to start a day. Sydney has yet to be totally convinced.
Okay Hannah. Re: sleep. Juniper slept in a crib in our room from day one. We would bring her into our bed when she woke around 4-6 am. She was sleeping 7+ solid hours from about 6 weeks old to 7 months (we were lucky). THEN, she decided to reverse her approach. NOW, she sleeps in our bed almost all night. On a good night, we get her to sleep 4-5 solid hours in her crib. My big mama faux-pas was to nurse her down to sleep (I’m sure somebody at some point told me not to do this, but I forgot). So now Juniper associates being in our bed, and within six inches of my boob, with sleep. We have been working on new sleep associations (consistent nighttime routine, books, a lovey, etc.), and I TRY not to nurse too much during the night. It takes effort and we generally prefer sleep over effort, so we haven’t been accomplishing much. It seems just as soon as we make some headway, she gets a new tooth–disrupting our sleep patterns all over again.
Generally, the big issue is teaching them to self-sooth since their natural sleep cycles wake them up every hour. Obviously, most people do “cry it out” to teach self-soothing. Never say never, but I personally want to avoid cry-it-out if possible. Right now, we are reading “The No Cry Sleep Solutions” which addresses sleep issues for all types of situations (breast feeding, bottle feeding, bed-sharing, crib-sleeping, etc.) Our biggest, biggest hurdle is teaching Juniper to fall to sleep without nursing. Doooh! Our *next* baby, we will lay down drowsy, but awake, from the get-go!!