Sleep

This is Caleb. He is a sleepy boy very often. Last night we decided to start letting him "cry-it-out". It was awful. I had always been very adamantly against this method. But, Caleb is not sleeping enough. I don't think he really knows how to sleep well and he can't put himself back to sleep. Honestly, I would not mind if he woke up once to nurse in the middle of the night or even twice. But, he wakes up several times throughout the night and there are several times when he wakes up and will stay up for hours. The other day, he woke up around 2:30 am. I nursed him thinking he would go back to sleep. Because even though his pediatrician says that he does not need to be eating at night anymore, sometimes it's so much easier to just nurse him so that I can go back to sleep. On this occasion, though, he did not go back to sleep. Jeff went and slept in the other room and Caleb basically played in the bed beside me. I am not really sure what time he fell asleep. I fell asleep around 5am. The next thing I remember is that Jeff came into the bedroom and got Caleb at 6:30. He was up and playing (and pulling my hair). If Caleb did go back to sleep, he didn't sleep long. This happens so often, that I am really starting to become even more concerned with his sleeping habits. It's not like he sleeps the day away either. There will often be times where he will take two 20 or 30 minute naps and that's it.

So you see, something just isn't right about this. And since Caleb has turned 10 months old now and Jeff has been wanting to try to let Caleb cry it out and the doctor suggested it and I read a book ("Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child") I finally relented.

We have a regular routine with Caleb that we follow each night: bath or lotion and pjs, nursing, song, scripture, song, prayer. This is how it's been for awhile. Then I decided that after prayer instead of just putting him in his bed after prayer, I would rock him while we listened to his primary songs. So, after all of that, I rock him in the rocking chair in his room for awhile. He quiets down and starts humming himself to sleep and eventually, he's relaxed enough where I can put him in his crib and he will go right to sleep. As long as we follow his routine, he goes to sleep. It's great. I'm glad that we've been able to figure out how to help him get to sleep at night.

The problem is that he does not stay asleep. Lately he's been waking up two hours after going down. Sometimes he'll make it to three hours. This kind of sleeping is not good for any of us. I am often so tired lately that my memory fails me and I forget things that I need to get done or I am not motivated to get things done. Caleb is pleasant a lot of the time, but then he does get really fussy on occasion and it can be hard to console him when he gets so overtired. Jeff has to drive long distances and drive a lot and so often he'll just go sleep in another room. I would be fine if Caleb even gave us consistent 5 hour stretches at a time. I'm not saying that he has to sleep through the night and not wake until morning (though I wouldn't complain if that's how it ended up). It would just be nice to sleep for several hours at a time. And that if he did wake up, we could quickly get him to go back to sleep instead of those nights where he's up for hours.

So, back to last night. I was so sick. I felt miserable. Which maybe was a blessing. I hated hearing Caleb cry. Jeff would check on him in increasing increments of five minutes. So if he last went in after 20 minutes, then he would next go in at 25 minutes. I am not sure how long Caleb ended up crying before he went to sleep because I fell asleep, but I think it was at least an hour before I fell asleep. It's really heartbreaking and I definitely shed a few tears and I just kept thinking how awful this whole thing is. And I just had to keep reminding myself that I was trying to help him. Oh, I hope this helps him. It's one of the hardest things I've had to do. Of course, one night isn't going to be enough time, so we'll have to do it more and I just don't know how I am going to handle it. I'll have to take a shower or something.

Caleb woke up around 11:30 or so and I nursed him and we both slept on the sofa until almost 5 when he woke up again and I put him in his crib, turned on the hair dryer for a minute and then his sleep sheep and then he went to sleep. He slept there for about an hour and a half and then Jeff brought him into our bed.

We really have tried a lot of other things first, sleeping on the floor in his room, letting him sleep in our bed, hairdryer, routines, nursing, not nursing, rocking, singing, everything I can think of. Hopefully, he'll learn to sleep soon- I don't know if I'll be able to manage if this lasts longer than a week.

So friends, if you feel so inclined, please pray for us. We pray all of the time about this very issue, in the morning, at night, family prayer, couple prayer, personal prayer, and even in the middle of the night. We just haven't found what works for us yet. Hopefully, this will (or else I will feel terribly guilty for allowing my sweet boy to cry for so long).

P.S. The good news is that he took a 2 hour nap for the past couple of days. So we're moving in the right direction. :)