Do you remember the letter I wrote to my son?
Well he listened and answered in a way that was favorable to me, but not by his choice… you see finally, after months of getting up at least once (most nights twice), he is sleeping through the night.
We had his 9 month appointment with the pediatrician Friday morning and she once again asked how he was doing at night. After telling her that he was still waking up twice most nights, usually with a nighttime feeding around 4am, she let us know (again) that he should be able to sleep at least 9 -10 hours at a time… especially now that he’s on solids and obviously not lacking in the food and weight department (you can check out his stats here). She (again) suggested we let him cry it out fall asleep on his own, letting us know that it could take some getting used to on his part meaning he could cry for hours and we were supposed to take big kid pills and suck it up and stop spoiling him.
So we set to it Friday night… once again he fell asleep (nursing) while we were downstairs. I did the usual and carried my still sleeping child up into his room and put him in his crib. When he woke up two hours later, I went into his room to let him know that we hadn’t abandoned him, but that was it. I didn’t pick him up, I didn’t rock him or nurse him, and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t pass “Go” and collect my $200. He didn’t like that all I did was stand there and try to soothe him, but he was tired and fell asleep after 10 minutes of crying fussing. That night he slept through until about 4 am, so it wasn’t too bad considering his usual schedule.
The next night he went to bed alright and everything was going well until my husband (who btw was down in the basement on the treadmill watching the Blackhawks/Canucks playoff game) let out a loud “WOO HOO!!!” as the Hawks scored their 3rd goal bringing them to the lead. Our son who was 2 floors above him woke up and was not happy… at all. Once again I went up into his room and tried to soothe him without picking him up… let’s just say it took almost 2 hours for him to calm down and finally fall asleep… sniffling… probably cursing me in his sleep. I was near tears myself, but I survived and he slept through until 7 am (after finally falling back asleep around 1 am).
Sunday was better… after spending a hectic day traveling down to visit both Omi (my mom) and Grandma Kim, he was pooped… but he had an hour nap in the car and we weren’t able to get him to bed until shortly before 10. Crying… tantrums… more possible baby babble cursing… sobs and sniffling for about 30 minutes and he slept through until 5ish!! Last night, bed at 8 and 10 minutes later he was asleep… until 5:30 this morning!! But tonight was the best! I got him ready and put him down shortly after 7:30 because I knew he was tired and was falling asleep while nursing (again)… 2 minutes of fussing and then two minutes of playing(!!!) with his toys and he passed out fell asleep and has been sleeping soundly ever since!! I think we have a breakthrough!! I’ve even started forcing him to nap in his crib (a place he would only nap in if he was already passed out before) and he’s been falling asleep within minutes.
Now I’m thinking to myself… why oh why could we not have been stronger before? I could have been getting a full nights sleep for months now, but instead… well, at least we’ve learned, so that when the next one comes around we know what we have to do… I just hope that we don’t cave in again and push it off for months like we did with him.