Sleeeep.... I want some.

I've been learning some fascinating facts about sleep lately. Most of it comes from a book called "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and just learning from my kids day to day. The author of this book, Marc Weissbluth, founded a sleep clinic in Chicago and personally studied thousands of kids' sleep, has been a pediatrician for 30 years and a parent to four kids and grandparent to two.

The most helpful/fascinating facts to me are these:

-sleep begets sleep: you can't get better nighttime sleep from your child by keeping them up during the day or giving them a later bedtime. It actually makes it worse, because the only way they can stay up that much is to start running on adrenaline, which then interferes with their sleep. This is true for overtired adults too. I've certainly proven this point with my boys - in fact Caleb actually slept through the night a few days ago, and it was after a day when he had 3 two hour naps!

- the best time for anyone (21 months old to adulthood) to nap is 12 hours from the midpoint of their nighttime sleep. So if Ian sleeps from 7:45 p.m. to 6:45 a.m., he will get the most restorative sleep from a 1:15 nap. We'd been having some trouble getting Ian to stay in bed and settle down to sleep for naps until I learned this point. I've been starting his nap routine right at 12:45 because it had been taking him about 30 minutes to fall asleep. EVERY time I've done this he has fallen to sleep immediately with no restless behavior and slept for 90 minutes or more. Talk about a selling point for paying attention to the clock on this one! The true test will be today when grandma is here!

- If you are very aware of your child's sleep cues and make sure they consistently get good, restorative sleep, that is far more likely to get them sleeping through the night and taking good naps (which directly affects their mood and ability to learn) than making sure they have a full tummy, what position they are in, use of a pacifier or no, breastfeeding to sleep... basically any of the other theories on what makes a baby sleep or wake. That means that if you are very careful to prevent fatigue in your child you may not ever have to resort to them "crying it out" or any other more stressful technique to get some rest for everyone. I hope that this is true, because I just can't seem to let my boys cry! God made that noise to have a very strong effect on a mommy for a reason - it's designed for me to respond to... not ignore! And it's very effective!

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