My life has been a lethargic haze to this point since having Cameron. By 6½ weeks he was doing amazing and sleeping five hours all by himself. At seven months old, we left for Yellowstone and then on to Utah. While we were in Island Park, Idaho we slept in a trailer. To save on space and issues, rather than put the Pack N’ Play up, we decided to let Cameron sleep with us. Since then, it has been an uphill battle to say the least. We essentially started over again after we returned home.
Going from self-soothing and drifting off to sleep to the other spectrum of needing us near him has been exhausting and taxing on me to say the least. Bryan works very early shift, so I have tried not to disturb him if possible. We kept him in our room (not in our bed) until recently, moving him into his own room (a GOOD 100 feet from ours. Try walking it, bleary-eyed at 4 a.m.) at ten months old. This has been very successful and I have been getting a lot more sleep than I had to this point. Previously, he was waking every two hours like a newborn again and I had been a walking zombie on a good day. After moving him, he was staying asleep for four hours.
I have known all-too-well that by this age, he should have been sleeping through the night. I kept a pretty rigid nighttime routine with Ian with which I was by the book. I had to give the book back and didn’t bother buying it (I’m totally serious!). I figured I knew what I was doing. It was so nice to have a little one around again that I got sucked into the I’ll-rock-him-to-sleep-til-he’s-unconscious trap and that was my (other) downfall. Something had to change and I realised I needed help. A friend gave me a gift certificate to an online store and I bought me some Supernanny books. I figured I needed them for Ian too. Last night I sat in bed until 1 a.m. pouring over its pages trying to learn all I could on techniques to remedy the situation and make everyone’s life a little easier. The technique is: The baby wakes, you go in after two minutes of them crying and rub his/her back and soothe them with a comforting noise, but don’t talk. Don’t pick them up and don’t feed them. When they have calmed down (but are not asleep), walk out the room. Double the time increments you wait until you re-enter the room until they stay asleep. It may be a long night, and a very long week to say the least.
The little bugger slept right through until 9 o’clock this morning.
a Brit different 