Ahhh… bad, bad sleep night. I know I must sound like a negative guy to all those parents with good sleepers (they are either born that way, or we’ve managed to do something horribly, terribly wrong with our son) or to those of you who are years removed from this experience and forget just how taxing it is. But last night, as I had surmised, sucked.
We are definitely to blame for most of this. Our doc told us to do whatever we could to get him to sleep, so we went to the quick fix of the swing for all things sleeping. He slept, sure. But now he won’t sleep if he’s not in it. At least not without a fight and even then not well.
Case and point, last night. Night one with food weaning and night one in the crib. He maged to string together a 3 hour sleep followed by food followed by a two hours of sleep. Before that he went to bed at 8ish and proceeded to make up every 15 minutes or so until he finally fell into the three hour sleep around 12:30. This started again after the 2 hours of sleep, when he awoke at 3:45. He woke up every 15-20 minutes or so until he was finally up at 7. I actually put him in his swing at 5, in hopes of eeking out a few more precious minutes of sleep, but to no avail. There is nothing worse than getting jarred awake by a screaming baby over and over and over when you’re dreaming of the beach. And I don’t even like the beach.
I was lucky enough to preside over the latter part, Jen the former. Both of us got no sleep.
And as a extra-added-bonus, we have super cranky Hayes this morning. He’s already eaten 12oz of food since 7, and is on his second nap. Boy this is fun. Boy will I be glad when this is over. Boy, am I negative!
And guess who just woke up crying? Gotta go. Thank goodness Jen is coming home to help!
AJ says:
May 6th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Have you considered an Amby Baby motion bed? The idea is that when the baby stirs, his own movement rocks him back to sleep.
My kid used one birth to 8 months (until she insisted on sleeping on her stomach). Other parents have reported longer usage. My daughter was sleeping (mostly) through the night at 4 months. The bed collapses for travel and the transition to a flat mattress wasn’t difficult for us.
http://www.ambybaby.com/
Grace says:
May 6th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
I so feel for you two! My daughter was one of those “easy” sleeping babies. My son? Not so easy. Let me tell you that the first couple of nights are the roughest. You just have to stick it out. Continue with the plan. No changes. That’ll just confuse the kid. We eventually let him cry it out when he was 6 months old. We all (my hubby, my daughter, my son and I) needed sleep. We eventually got to it.
Jason says:
May 8th, 2005 at 8:00 am
You can’t expect instant gratification. It will take some time for hime to get into a schedual.
The one thing I believe your doctor missed in her advice is also when he throws a fit don’t pick him up either. You must learn to comfort without picking up.
Normally with our son his mom only needs to place her hand in his crib for a while and he’ll quiet down.
We really feel for you both as William was difficult when he was younger the only thing we can promise is that it will get better.