Am I Feeling Sleep Wise?

By now you're likely thinking I'm obsessed with my daughters' sleep habits. While it may appear that way, I'm more obsessed with the health and well-being of the four members of the Turcotte Family. More sleep for Mommy and Daddy means more patience and better decision making, while more sleep for Molly and Abigail means happy babies, no tears and sleeping through the night. That makes sleep worth being obsessed about!! 

While sleeping patterns at night have hit a high for consistency and length, our naps during the day and amount of crying to go to sleep at night have hit a major low. Looking for more advice we contacted Jillian Dowling from Sleepwise, who came recommended from our neighbour. Jillian offers free 15 minute sleep consultations over the phone followed by further consulting if required. I originally emailed Jillian all of my sleep battles and concerns about the girls and then arranged to have a conversation with her. 

While I was rather proud of our approx 7pm-7am sleep schedule, Jillian suggested it was time to drop the 11pm dream feed. I'll admit this feeding was beginning to grow old for me as I often found myself exhausted but staying up in order to do this feedings. Previous attempts a month ago to remove this feeding often resulted in 2am wake up cries from the girls. Jillian assured me that at basically 6 months of age and over 13lbs the girls were ready to sleep through the night without the feeding. And she was right! Shawn and I woke with delight around 7am the next day to our daughters cooing away in their cribs! One comment she made to us really stood out for us; she pointed out that some of our battles getting the girls to sleep could be because at the dream feed, the girls fall back asleep during the feeding and we put them to sleep but for the other bed times we put them in their crib awake or drowsy so we're sending them mixed messages. So far we have dropped the dream feed 4 days in a row and are happy to report the girls are still sleeping through the night and getting the girls to go down for naps has been a bit easier. We're still working on removing the tears from bed time, but we're hoping that comes soon as we continue to stick to our sleep plan. We're definitely getting more sleep, the girls are getting more sleep and for now, that's enough to make me feel sleep wise! Zzzzzzzzzzzz