Monday, February 7, 2011

The Thing I Hate Most...

...about the days Brian's on call is that (more often then not) Nathan is super difficult to put to sleep at night. I used to think that I was only imagining this correlation, that I had less patience and was more sensitive to bedtime difficulties because I was SO ready for the day to be over, but now I've revised my opinion.  It was pretty clear when we changed our bedtime routine (I can't believe that was less then a month ago!) that Nathan really needed some time with his Daddy before he could fall asleep.  But I think that need of Nathan's arose WAY before we realized it (like the night Brian was on call and Nathan screamed for over an hour in the middle of the night - five months ago).  Tonight our bedtime routine went so smoothly, then...
  • 20 minutes after I put Nathan down he was awake and fussing.  I went in and gave him more milk and put him back down in his crib.
  • After another 20 minutes, he was still awake and fussing, I went back in with water and then put him back down... 
  • ...then he started crying.  After about 10 minutes I went back in with water and told him that Daddy was still at work and he wouldn't be able to see Daddy or say goodnight to him tonight, but he would see Daddy in the morning. He started crying again before I was out the door.
  • After another 10 minutes of on and off crying, I went back in and rocked him to sleep.  It was now about an hour since I first put him in his crib!  We never rock him to sleep anymore because he's so good at falling asleep on his own, but even though he was exhausted, he had just gotten too worked up to put himself to sleep easily.
I hope that's all the excitement we have tonight, because its already way more then I wanted to have this evening!

2 comments:

  1. Maybe you can record a video of Brian telling Nathan goodnight and let him see it on the computer at bedtime? Might be worth a try--be cool if it worked.

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  2. Good idea, Fran. I was even thinking of a recording of Brian say on the cell voice mail or something like that. A recorded book at bedtime of Brian reading to him...just some thoughts. Good luck, Katie. I remember how stressful it is at night when baby boy does not want to go to sleep and the adults can't wait to!

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