The Baby Boycott

Okay, so no, before you get carried away, we are not boycotting baby B. Rather, he is holding a boycott of his own...against sleep of all things! I mean, isn't the saying something like happy sleep, happy baby? For us, it's more like little sleep, happy baby. So while he's still in an awesome mood and is still his charming self, B has decided that sleep is overrated. For the past few nights, B has been up singing and entertaining himself during the wee hours of the morning...like say 3am to 5:30am. To his credit, last night he did sleep from 11:30pm to 4:30am, ate and went back to sleep at 5am, but by 6am, he was up and doing the baby dance, ready for the day to start. Um, yeah, I have on two different socks today, we were late bringing J to school and baby, mamma is tired!

*I forgot to mention that this is our second week with the transition to B's crib. The bassinet wasn't working for the "beefy" boy anymore and since he exceed the 15 pound weight limit on the bassinet about a month ago, we decided that we couldn't push it anymore. Especially since when he pushed up on his arms, he was halfway over the top of the thing anyway.*

So alas, it's off to the crib and he likes it. He can stretch out and sleeps peacefully in it, when he sleeps. Even through this little phase (yes, I am saying it will be a little--ie short phase), it's still hard to get frustrated. Something about walking to the crib to try to get him to settle down and seeing those gums sticking out and happy that just makes you appreciate the moment. So we soldier on, with no sleep...with diet coke!

Thankfully J is a great sleeper, once he's asleep. He doesn't wake up while B is exercising his vocal chords! I need to go back and look at my journals from J and see what he was doing and how he was sleeping at 3.5 months. That may give me hope.

In the meantime, I am thinking I need to pull out Baby Wise again. We were doing so well on it and he was down to waking only one time a night. I don't know what happened. Dr. Ezzo, please come back to my rescue!!!

Baby--1; Mom--0

Okay, so today B is celebrating the big eight week milestone! I won't say where has the time gone because I know I have repeated that chorus enough in this blog already...but seriously! Of course, B is an awesome baby and hitting the milestones beautifully, well in my book anyway :). He has a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we shall get the official stats then. Anyhow, we are settling into a grove and J is enjoying his little brother, he especially loves showing him off to his preschool class daily.

Well, about this time when J was a baby, I decided that I was tired of the sleepless nights and would give sleep training a go. With the help of my best friend, Dr. Gary Ezzo, and his book BabyWise (no, I don't really know him), J was sleeping through the night (from about 10pm to 7am) within about a week of starting the training. Praise sweet baby Jesus :). So now that B is at the eight week mark, I figured now was as good of a time as any to get him started. So yesterday was day one...

And okay, so this method does not involve me letting him scream his head off until he falls asleep from exhaustion (just wanted to get that out there)...even though mommy wants to scream then sleep sometimes. So basically, it's changing their eating and sleeping patters to go from eat-sleep-wake-play to eat-wake-play-sleep and repeating the cycle every three hours. So then while B is eating, he has to stay awake and once he finishes his food, he has a period of play time or anything to keep him awake for at least an hour, then letting him fall asleep for the last part of the cycle. I won't get into the science of why or how this works, but I do know from my experience that it works.

So yesterday, armed with my four year old book and with my timeline and Itzbeen (another great mommy invention) on standby, we started day one. And well, for the most part, it went smoothly....up until we got to the last feeding before bed. So we got B fed, bathed and read for that LONG sleep stretch (okay, wishful thinking) but he decided that he was ready to talk and play. But how could you deny those loving coo sounds and sweet gummy smile? So we talked and laughed and admired this creation until HE decided that it was time for sleep. So once he slept, I passed out. And I will say that his first night time sleep period went from what was 2.5 to 3 hours to about 4 hours. Then he went back down without incident and woke up to eat 3 hours later. Small wins I guess...So we will take it...And though B gets the point for winning the sleep training on day one, we will try again tonight.

And now that he's napping now, we have an hour left before the cycle starts again, this keyboard is starting to look blurry :)...Off for a few winks for mom!