I've always been told I was lucky to have a son who started sleeping through the night at 4 weeks old. First it was 5 hours and by the time he was 2 months old, he'd made his snooze last 10 hours. Of course there were the odd nights where he would give me a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep, but they were so few and far between that it wasn't worth mentioning. I think my good luck has just run out. For the last week Paul has been waking up twice a night, like clockwork.
He goes to bed at 9pm.
Wakes up at 12am.
Goes back to sleep at 12:15am.
Wakes up at 4am.
Doesn't want to go back to sleep.
Mommy struggles to either stay awake or rock him to sleep.
Finally at 7am we're up for the day.
He's still napping at 10am and 2pm...or should I say
we're napping but, it's just not fair.
I'm
soooo tired.
And so over the course of the week, I've been trying different things in order to get Paul sleeping through the night again.
1. Warm up the room a little.
It's getting a little colder at night so I decided to turn the heater on in his room and warm it up by 2 degrees.
It didn't work.
2. Shut off the night light.
I thought that maybe if it was dark in his room, he might fall back asleep.
It didn't work.
3. Put him to bed earlier.
I can't remember which expert said this but sometimes when you put a child to bed earlier, they'll sleep later.
It didn't work.
4. Keep him up later.
Maybe if he was so tired he couldn't stay awake he might sleep through the night.
It didn't work.
5. White Noise.
I turned on his sound machine really low so he could have some background noise while he slept.
It didn't work.
6. Finally...Give him 9oz of milk in a bottle right before bed.
Although Paul always had one last feeding before bed, I guess he would just fall asleep and use my nipple as a souther instead of filling his tummy.
He would even nurse when he woke up during the night but I must be too comfortable for him because it just put him to sleep.
Now he fills up and for the last two nights he hasn't woken up (keep your fingers crossed).
Yippy!!!
Now I don't know how long this will last, and I'm hoping this is just one of those growth spurts because I only have enough frozen milk to do this for 5 more nights. Of course I'm still pumping but, he can drink a bottle faster than I can fill it. So I guess I'm in for a surprise a week from now. Until then, I'm going to get as much shut eye as I can.
