1st to leave

Well, after almost 3 months and 3 great nights of sleep training, Baby N is leaving us tonight to live with his grandparents. They also have his older brother - older by exactly one year.

We've never actually had a child leave us to go home or to go with family, so it's unnerving to get that phone call.  It's like a great big, "remember this is temporary" smack in the face. At least they are giving us time to pack him up and spend a little time with him.  So, I am leaving work early to get him and start getting his stuff in order.  I am also trying to get a bunch of pictures ordered to put in a small photo album for his grandparents.  They didn't even know he existed until about 2 months ago. Heck, I am not sure if they've ever even seen him.  I am glad that he's so young & (probably) won't freak out with whole new situation & people.

I am wondering if I should write them about the sleep training so they don't go through what we went through. We are gonna miss that little guy.  And I am not looking forward to explaining it to ML & JC.  They LOVE him.

ML & Baby N - my little superheroes

Sleep training

Soooo, as we may have mentioned once or twice, Baby N is a notoriously bad sleeper.  As in he wakes up almost every 2 hours - and won't go back to sleep unless he gets a bottle (I guess he still thinks he's a newborn).  We've tried a pacifier & he just won't take it for more than 10 seconds.  I never thought I'd be trying to get a 6 month old to TAKE a pacifier.  But, he sucks on the bottle to soothe himself back to sleep & I want him to sleep, so we try the very special pacifier - given to us by his parents, who swear he uses it (and who want it back for sentimental reasons, if he doesn't use it).

Last night I started, "Let's-get-Baby-N-to-sleep-on-his-own Sleep Training Boot Camp."  He goes down fine, but usually with a bottle, so that's the first thing I changed.  Now one of us will take him upstairs and give him his bottle until he's almost ready to fall asleep, then put him in his crib.  Basic, right?  Maybe for most kids, but usually moving him after he falls asleep wakes him completely up and the screaming begins.  But, last night I tried something different.  I noticed in the car the other day that when I turned up the radio a bit he fell right to sleep (during a screaming bout).  Then, I remembered that his mom wrote in a note that he "likes loud music."  So, I thought - let's try that & brought up the world's last CD player & put in the only CD I could find - Adele's 21.  Who wouldn't want to fall asleep with with sweet, sweet sounds of Adele crooning in their ear?  I put him in his crib, gave him the pacifier (which was spit out in the noted 10 seconds) turned up Adele and left.  He fell asleep.

Ok. That worked.  But falling asleep at bedtime isn't the problem.  It's staying asleep.  We were just falling asleep when he woke up around 11:30.  I gave him his pacifier and rubbed his head and told him it was time to sleep then left.  He whined and cried (not his ear-drum shattering cry though) for about 5 minutes (although it felt like forever) then was quiet.  He fell back to sleep.  On his own.

Cut to 2 hours later.  He's up and crying. I do the same thing again.  He doesn't stop, I wait 5 minutes then figure that maybe I should not stop the bottle cold turkey and gave him some watered-down formula & we went right back to sleep.  Ok, not bad.

2 hours later, it's 4 am.  He's screaming.  Now, when I say screaming, I mean screaming.  Like he is slowly being eaten by a bear.  It's ridiculous.  I vowed that he will not win this battle - no bottle and I will not pick him up & bring him to my bed.  Every 5 or 6 minutes for an hour, I would go into him, give him the pacifier rub his head (he LOVES that) tell him he's ok and it's time to sleep then I go back to bed.  After an hour of that every 5 minutes he fell asleep until 6ish, which is when Andrea wakes up.

So, I will attempt to do this for a week and hope it makes a difference.  Fingers crossed it will because we are going to Mexico for 4 days for my sister's wedding next week and Andrea's mom & aunt are watching the kids - I would like at least SOME sleep improvement by then.  No deserves to go through this - especially if they are doing us a favor. (We locked them in back when we only had 3 kids - oops! sorry guys!)

Sleep

Andrea and I are good sleepers.  Our children are not.  We know it's our fault - we know we created bad sleepers of our 2 bio kids.  But, as luck would have it (or not) Baby N is also a bad sleeper.

With ML, well, he was our first, so, in theory he was going to sleep in a bassinet next to the bed and I would get up at night to nurse him.  I swore he wouldn't sleep in our bed.  Swore.  Well, guess what, once I discovered the ease of nursing at night - basically falling back to sleep as soon as he latched on, I was hooked.  He napped in his own bed, yup, bed (well, mattress on the floor, Montessori-style), we didn't have cribs, we are hippies.  Then, especially once I went back to work, we took turns putting him to bed at night - and staying with him until he fell asleep.  I know.  I know - DANGER.  But, it was our time with him, we loved it - reading lots of stories, singing, making up stories, etc.  It was great.  But it also created a sleep issue.  Now, at 4, we still have a longish bedtime ritual, but ML no longer wakes up in the middle of the night to come to our room.  It only took 4 years!

ML snoozing the day away

And of course, we did the same thing with JC because we did not learn from the past, and thus were doomed to repeat it. JC was a demon at night.  He did not like to stay asleep - and it was so much easier to have him sleep with us and when he woke up at night we would be right there to get him back to sleep.  for the most part.  JC is now 2 and he wakes up once a night and one of us (we take turns) heads into his room and sleeps with him.  I know, again, that's bad.  And really, we could just lay with him until he falls asleep then leave,  but he is so warm and snugly it's hard to leave.  We figure that he will stop waking up by the age of 4 as well.  Just two more years! Woohoo!

He's peaceful now, but just wait...(JC)

Now for Baby N.  I guess we just hoped that if we got a baby he'd be a good sleeper because lots of babies are decent sleepers and maybe someone (God or whoever) would cut us a break.  Nope. When he first came to our house he couldn't sleep AT ALL without being held.  As Andrea says, "he needs at least 3 points of human contact at all times."  He would fall asleep in our arms and the minute we put him down he screams.  No,  not cries, we goes right from silence to screaming.  It's a treat.  Luckily, since he's been going to daycare he's gotten a bit better - he naps for an hour at a time each day in a crib and he will fall asleep in bed on his own at home.  But he will not stay asleep.  At the most he will stay asleep for 3 hours, then it's screaming.  We don't need a monitor to hear him even though he is 3 floors away from us.

Then, two nights ago, he had a cold and was really snotty and I think he slept about 3 hours total - and not in a row.  Andrea dealt with him that night and sent me into another room so that she knew she would get a full nights sleep the next night.  The hardest part for me is that I did not create this sleep monster - at least with ML & JC I couldn't get too mad because I did it to myself. But, with Baby N, oooohhhh boy, the thoughts I have about his parents when he is screaming at 4:00 in the morning are not nice.  Funny how that works.  He is feeling better now and slept ok last night, fingers crossed tonight is even better - I am tired of being tired.

Baby N - the first time he ever fell asleep on his own - it wasn't even bed time!