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My Precious Pennies

I will be AWAY until late February as we do this moving thing...again.

Ginger from Attention Target Shoppers & Tricia from 1stopmom
will be holding down the fort in the meantime - thank you so much, ladies!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Works for Me Wednesday: Sleeping on the floor!


We've been without cable for three months now and we've saved so much money that we've decided to take things a bit further and get rid of the bed! Just imagine how much money you'll save on the mattress, the bed frame, bed sheets...and you get the added bonus of having a HUGE sleeping area. And you'll never have to tell the dog to get off the "bed" again...!

I'm kidding (sorry I couldn't help myself). I didn't get rid of our bed, but sleeping on the floor does really work for me. My little princess is only 5 months old, but she has always been the perfect little sleeper. She falls asleep by herself a hour or so after her last feeding at night, and sleeps through the night until around 8am.  After a quick snack she snoozes again until about 10am. 

That's a lot of sleep for a little person, so nap times are a challenge for us. She definitely needs a nap in the afternoon to stay un-cranky, but unlike night-time she has difficulty getting to and staying asleep. The only way for her to get to sleep in the afternoon is to nurse regardless of her actual hunger level. She doesn't want to suck on a thumb or a paci...she just wants mommy. And unlike at night when you can pretty much jump around with her in your arms and she'll still be snoozing away, in the afternoons the slightest movement wakes her up. She's not sound sensitive, just movement sensitive and most of the time she jerks herself awake.

Unless I want to hold her for the entirety of her nap, I can't feed her in an upright position because just the motion of putting her down will wake her up. My only other option is to nurse her lying down, but the problem is that I end up waking her up when I go to get up from the bed. We have a regular old spring mattress, and no matter how gently I try to roll myself off the bed she ends up waking up.

The only solution that has worked for me is to put a blanket on the living room floor. I grab a couple of couch cushions for my own head, and lie down to nurse her for the 5 minutes or so that it takes for her to fall asleep. As long as I'm careful when I'm getting up and don't touch her, she will take her entire nap on the living room floor. I've also noticed that she doesn't jerk herself awake as often. On the rare occasions that I got her into the pack-n-play without waking her up, she would only be able to take a 30 minute nap before waking up. I suppose that when she moves in her sleep, there's not enough support there and the whole "mattress" area ends up moving and she wakes up from it. We certainly don't have that problem on the ground.



3 comments:

Kristin - The Goat said...

Love the photo of the dog and baby! I don't have any children but I can see how you'd want to make sure that the baby stays asleep!

Have a fabulous day!
Kristin

My WFMW post this week is Pack and Ship

Anonymous said...

Ahhh, super sweet. I nursed all of my babies to sleep. In the afternoons, I'd pretty much end up sleeping with them. ;-)

Anonymous said...

How precious! What a blessing to have such a good sleeper.

 
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