Before we get into that, here's the first family pic that we've taken in 2 months, since Christmas. Not great of Nathan, but we only took 3 shots, and we usually need more then that to get a good one of him. We went to the wedding reception for some friends on Saturday night and luckily had just borrowed some bigger clothes for Nathan from one of our friends, Melissa, or Nathan wouldn't have had anything to wear. Nathan is officially 4 months old as of Monday, but he's in 6 and 9 month clothes!
So, unfortunantly, my life is consumed with Nathan's sleep issues right now. For the past few weeks, most nights Nathan is waking up 3-6 times a night, sometimes every hour. Brian and I have been trying to figure out what the problem is. At first we thought it might be early teething, then I thought it might be reflux, but now we agree that it has to do with Nathan's sleep associations.
During the first month or two, I think we were putting Nathan down to sleep while he was drowsy but awake (the right thing to do), but somewhere between then and now we (or I) changed that and was waiting until he was all the way asleep to put him down. I think the change happened in late December - we were having lots of trouble getting Nathan to go to sleep and then traveled with him for over a week. Since December, for naps and bedtimes (and night wakings) I have been nursing Nathan to sleep or we were rocking him to sleep, then laying him down in his crib. If he woke up, we picked him back up and continued soothing him until he was asleep before we laid him back down again. Well, after lots of reading, we now believe that Nathan only knows how to go to sleep while being held, which is OK until he wakes up in the middle of the night, realize that he's along in his crib and gets upset because he doesn't know how to put himself back to sleep in that situation. So now we need to teach him new sleep associations ie. that its ok to go to sleep by himself in the crib.
So starting on Saturday, we/I have started modifying what we're doing. For naps, I'm swaddling Nathan, then rocking and singing to him until I'm sure he's drowsy, then lay him down in his crib, where he wakes up slightly, and then I pat and "shhhh" him until he falls asleep. It has been working pretty well for naps, and actually I'm already seeing an improvement in how long he will sleep for his naps. He used to only sleep for 30-40 minutes, then he would wake up and sometimes I could rock him back to sleep (I knew he was still tired) for another 30-40 minutes. But by the end of the day he would still be fussy and grumpy. But this week, he's been taking much longer naps (usually 1.5 hours!), and definitely he isn't as fussy as night.
We are trying to do the same thing for nights, but with varying degrees of success. The problem is that when we lie Nathan down, he will start kicking his legs, then forcefully turning his head back and forth and will get himself all worked up. And during the middle of the night, I have less patience and get frustrated a lot more easily. Over the weekend, we were down to 3 and 2 night wakings (on Saturday night and Sunday night), but then Monday night was bad again, with Nathan waking up either 4 or 5 times, and twice I was up 1 or 1.5 hours trying to get him back to sleep. It was taking so long because I was trying to get him to fall asleep in his crib, but both times I ended up nursing him back to sleep. Last night (Tuesday night) was better, he woke up at 10:30, 2:30 and 6:00, but he wouldn't go back to sleep after the 6:00 waking.
So this post has been long and convoluted, but basically I think we are making some headway and hope to continue to improve Nathan's sleeping habits. Please say a prayer for us - that Nathan learns to sleep better and for patience for me!
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