fixed up for him. We were going to eat lunch, so my mom, Russ and I went and laid him in the cradle, swaddled tightly the way they showed us in the hospital. We stood there for a minute and looked at him like, "Well, is that it? He just sleeps now, right?"
Wrong. 5 minutes into our meal and he's awake, red-faced and crying loudly. And so it began. Despite my mom's repeated offers to keep him during the night, I lost a LOT of sleep those first few months. After a lot of work jiggling, pacing, shhhh'ing, swaddling, and trying to sneakily put him down in his cradle, he would inevitably wake up shortly thereafter, positively insulted that his warm and snuggly mom would dare to put him down. At one point, he slept well in his carseat/carrier. I guess he liked the snuggly-ness of it. I could maybe get 3 hours at a time out of him in that.
But, like most babies, what he really wanted was to be next to me, safe and warm. It took me a little while to get used to it and feel safe doing it, especially when he wasn't able to roll over on his own. I would sleep in the middle of the bed on my left side with my left arm tucked up under the pillow and my head. He would lie next to me, against my torso. Russ would be on my other side since he was initially (and reasonably) afraid of rolling over on him.
As Garrett grew, he was able to maneuver his way around the bed as he pleased and we moved him to the middle of us so that if he got curious during the night, hopefully one of us would feel him escaping and wake up. For a while around 9-12 months we were sleeping great, with 1-2 wakings at night. And then it just all went to hell in a handbasket. He started waking up 6+ times a night around his 1-year birthday. His soothing method of choice was to pull my hair while he fell asleep. It usually took 30 minutes or more of this torture before he fell asleep.
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| As you can see, it was really cute when Garrett slept with us. But he was a huge bed hog!! |
When I started having my thyroid problems, sleep was hard to come by. And I needed a LOT of it. Things were just miserable for a while. And the whole time I was convinced that sleeping with us is what Garrett needed and he would stop needing it when he was ready and that it was working just fine for our family. But last week I decided it just wasn't working any more. As much as I loved snuggling with my little man, the hair-pulling was leaving me angry and with a headache. And the continuous waking was leaving us all exhausted. Maybe we were responsible for his restless sleep, Russ with his snoring and me with my 5 trips to the bathroom (yeah, I know, we have issues). So last Thursday Garrett started sleeping in his pack-and-play in the room by himself (!!). It's been hard. We have waffled between several "methods" and are finally finding it is best to let him cry. When we went in for comforting, as one method has you do, it just upset him more and prolonged the exhausted crying phase of his falling asleep. Some of the details are a little fuzzy, but here's how things have been going...
Thursday, October 17:
7:00 pm - dad puts Garrett to bed in the family bed
9:00 pm - Garrett is up crying, mom gets him up and they play
10:30 pm - mom puts Garrett to bed in the family bed
11:15 pm - Garrett is still not asleep and mom has lost a fistful of hair (ouch!)
11:30 pm - mom puts Garrett to bed ON HIS OWN in the pack 'n' play; commence crying
12:15 am - Garrett quits crying and finally falls asleep
2:30 am - Garrett wakes, cries for less than 5 minutes, falls back asleep.
4:00 am - G wakes up, cries for about 20 minutes, falls back asleep.
9ish am - Garrett wakes up
Sunday, October 20:
My brother and his family are visiting tonight, so we are sleeping in the same room as Garrett.
9ish pm - we put G to sleep in the pack 'n' play.
9:30 pm - He's up. We put him in bed with us. He crawls around forEVER and finally falls asleep over an hour later.
the::rest::of::the::night am - I don't even know what happened. It was bad.
Monday, October 21:
11:30 am - Garrett wakes up. This is not good.
Tuesday, October 22:
10:00 am - Garrett wakes us. What is with this kid??
Thursday, October 24: **With renewed resolve** :)
7:00 pm - bedtime! Garrett goes down easily with a bottle.
7:30 pm - G is awake and crying. We let him cry. :(
9:00 pm - G stops crying and is asleep.
11:10 pm - G wakes up and cries for less than 5 minutes.
6:00 am - G wakes up and cries for about 20 minutes.
Friday, October 25:
9:15 am - Garrett awakens, NOT CRYING but walking around in his crib. He's super fussy, though, until naptime.
12:45-2:15 pm - G naps, but is interrupted by Bernoulli howling.
7:00 pm - bedtime! I could really get used to this...
8:30 pm - G is awake and crying. For some reason, it really gets to me this night. :(
9:45 pm - Crying stops and G is asleep.
3:50 am - G is awake and crying. It's awful. After 45 minutes, we decide to give him a bottle to help him go back down. Techincally, this is a crutch, but it worked. :/
Saturday, October 26
9:30 am - Garrett awakens, again not crying, and in a really good, active, chatty mood. :)
12:30-3:00 pm - G naps, interrupted by neither dog nor waking.
7:15 pm - bedtime! Crying from the get-go tonight, but only for about 15 minutes.
Sunday, October 27
6:30 am -
Garrett awakens, happy. But at 6:30 am - booooo!
11:30-1 pm
- Garrett naps.
8:30 pm -
Garrett goes down with NO protest. His bedtime was late tonight because we had
friends over and he was playing.
---several more good nights---
So, as you can see, much progress
has been made! We are enjoying our new life of much more and more-restful
sleep. Garrett is a happier kid, too. I don't regret ever having let him sleep
in our bed, but that time is over. We have all moved on. :)
