dealing with growth spurts - guest post

The other day I got a text from my friend, Tally.  She was excited to share a new "technique" that she figured out concerning growth spurts with her 2nd child.  (He's about 5 months now.)  Of course, I wanted to hear it.  Growth spurts aren't fun and any tip is a helpful tip.  After she told me her trick, I asked her if she wouldn't mind sharing it on my blog.  Thanks, Tally, for unveiling your baby secret!

--------------------

I don’t know about you, but as a “schedule person," one thing that I dread as a mom of an infant is growth spurts.  They can make your days so unpredictable, off schedule, and just plain exhausting.  I mean, isn’t that why you do Babywise, to be able to know what to expect for your day?  At least that's one of the reasons why I do it.  Well, with my second child I figured out a way to help make the growth spurts feel more like a normal day.  

I will preface this by saying that every child is different.  I don’t know if this will work for your child, but it does for mine.  Here's how I discovered it:  

My son had suddenly gotten extremely hard to put down for naps.  He is usually a pretty good napper, always taking 2-2.5 hour naps and only taking 5 minutes to put to sleep.  I was struggling with getting him to go to sleep.  Seeing as my husband doesn’t really like me to let him CIO (cry it out), I try to not do it as much as possible.  (You gotta respect the hubby!)  Plus, my son really just wouldn’t cry to sleep.  He just keeps crying and crying.  Really.  I’m not joking.  So I just decided to nurse him to sleep and be done with it.  (At this point I hadn’t figured out that he was in a growth spurt.) 

I was concerned that after nursing him to sleep, he wouldn't be hungry again when he woke up.  But, he took a good 2 hour nap and when he woke up, he still ate a full feeding!  Woohoo!  That was great because my son is not one to eat when he’s not hungry.  If he’s not hungry, he won’t eat.  (I don’t know where he gets his stubbornness!) 

The next nap I was determined not to nurse him to sleep because I didn’t want him to get used to it.  No avail.  He WOULD NOT go to sleep!  So, again, I nursed him to sleep and just hoped that this one day of doing it would be okay.  Again, he was still hungry after his 2 hour nap!  I was amazed.  This time, I finally started to wonder if he was having a growth spurt.  (After this continued for 2-3 days, it was definitely confirmed.) 

Once I figured out the magic routine for the growth spurt, here's about how it went:  wake up, nurse, waketime, nurse to sleep, nap.  Repeat!

Let me tell you, I didn’t mind the growth spurt as much this time around.  He still napped well, he got to eat when he was hungry, and he pretty much stayed on schedule.  It was glorious.  And when it was all over, he went back to normal - not nursing to sleep!  This is how it has worked for two growth spurts now so I’m officially a believer.  Hopefully it will work if I have other children!  Give it a try and let me know if it works for you too!