He's lucky he's so cute!
6:45 pm- Started our bedtime routine which includes Harrison's last feeding, listening to music, changing into pajamas, swaddling up his armpits, reading books, and singing a song.7:00 pm- Harrison keeps passing out mid-feeding. I keep trying to nudge him awake. Finally give up and change into pajamas. Read one book instead of the ususal three. Rock and sing songs.
7:05 pm- My previously sleepy baby is now wide awake as I am trying to put him down in his crib. I put him down, he fusses, I pick him up and rock him some more before putting him down again. I encourage him to suck on his fingers. He plays with his sleep sheep and fusses some more. I give in and give him the pacifier (his B).
7:15 pm- Harrison is drowsy, calm, and still awake. I leave the room.
7:25 pm- Cries over the monitor. My husband goes in and shushes him. Harrison falls asleep.
8:45 pm- Coughing over the monitor, followed by more cries. This ususally means a spit-up in Harrison's sleep has woken him up. Husband goes upstairs, cleans him up, and puts him in the full swaddle.
9:30 pm- We go to bed.
11:45 pm- More crying. I get up, Harrison eats and is near sleep during most of the feeding. Once he is done, I rock him for a few minutes and return him to the crib. He starts to thrash around and fuss. Give him his B and leave the room. While I'm in the bathroom I hear the crying begin again. Go back in, he fusses, so I rock him some more. When I put him down, the thrashing and fussing begins again. I pick him up and we lay down together on the mattress we have moved next to the crib. We doze together for about a half hour before I risk returning him to the crib. This time it works and I go back to bed around 12:45.
1:45 am- More crying. It's my husband's turn to get up. We have split the night into two shifts- 9-1 and 1-5. The early shift is by far the easier one!
Per the morning report from my husband, between 1:45 and 2:30 Harrison would sleep for a few minutes and then wake up. Jason would replace his B, which would work for a few minutes and then he'd wake up again. By 2:30 Jason's had enough and moves him into the rock n play bassinet- our last resort sleep crutch. It works, Harrison sleeps from about 2:30-4:45.
4:45 am- Jason wakes me up, thinking Harrison is probably hungry. I return to the mattress on the floor and nurse Harrison while we both snooze a bit longer. He falls asleep, and I carefully return him to the rock n play where he'll sleep until a little after 6 am. I get up to start the day (read: drink lots of coffee!) at 5:15 am.
Now this is a pretty typical night for us, and has been since Harrison was about 2 1/2 months old. I called him a "good sleeper" for a little while prior to that, as he would sleep from about 9:30 or 10 pm till about 5 am, getting up once to eat and going right back down. I counted my blessings that we had such a good sleeper at a relatively young age. I can't pinpoint exactly when this all began to change, but change it did! We've had nights that are a little bit better than last night, and nights that are quite a bit worse, but between Jason and I we are usually up at least 3 or 4 times once we go to bed. The longest stretch he's ever slept has been 5 hours, and that was when we left him with a sitter (curses!) If he sleeps for 3 we consider it a great night, 4 is a small miracle. According to our pediatrician, he "should" be sleeping an 8 hour stretch each night.
A rare moment- Harrison still asleep at 7 am!
And we've tried EVERYTHING that we know of. We've tried swaddling. Unswaddling. Swaddling his lower body only. Swaddling with one arm out. Stomach sleeping. Side sleeping. White noise. Different kinds of white noise. Music. Sleeping in our bed. Us sleeping on the floor in the nursery. Nursing only before bed. Bottle only before bed. Nursing and a bottle before bed. Making the room colder. Making the room warmer. Giving him rice cereal. EVERYTHING. We even tried Ferber/crying it out briefly. This is something that, before 4 months, I thought I would never even consider. Now I would happily let him cry it out every night if the crying period was followed by sleep. For Harrison, it's not. He'll cry it out for 45 minutes and then sleep for 20, only to begin all over again.
As I write this, I realize it's becoming a bit of a rant. And what Jason and I are finding is that what we need to do is rant a bit- every morning we have a debriefing of sorts to review what happened during each of our shifts. Then we observe that Harrison really appears to be a baby who innately struggles with sleep. And then, and this is new for us, we let it go. We try to shrug it off, and notice all the milestones he's hitting, or how happy he seems, and we let it go. Because we've decided that the more we fight it, the harder it gets. And the more we end up fighting each other. We had never had one single yelling match in our whole relationship, until just a few weeks ago when we found ourselves shouting expletives to each other in the middle of the night regarding whose turn it was to get up, or what strategy we were using at that point...I can't even remember what the fight was about now.
Acceptance is new for me. Which is interesting, as I work in a field where I teach the value of acceptance to others on a daily basis. But until recently, I had never learned how to use it for myself. Acceptance has truly become the most valuable tool in my parenting arsenal.
Well that...and coffee.
No comments:
Post a Comment