It's been awhile since I've been able to chronicle the life and times of the Bry. It turns out that my new job, which I started last Tuesday, requires actual work. The result thus far has been much, much less blogging. There has also been the matter of sleep. Or to put it more accurately, the complete and utter absence of sleep. It has felt a little like the newborn days recently, and my befuddled brain hasn't thought of a coherent sentence to write in a long time. For about 2 weeks straight, Bry decided that anywhere between 3:30 and 4:30 am was a fine time to greet the day and do some serious partying. He would stay up for 2-3 hours before finally collapsing back into a heap for another 45 minutes or so of slumber, after which - you guessed it - party time again. Nothing we did convinced Bry that staying horizontal with his eyes shut was really the way to go when it was still completely dark outside. Not rocking or nursing. Not leaving him alone or letting him cry. Not bouncing on the yoga ball or (just one time) sleeping on the floor in his nursery. Early bedtimes, late bedtimes, random naps, scheduled naps - none of it helped.
Then one evening, the sleep battles extended to bedtime, and I started hunting around for my receipt, because it felt like it was about time to return this kiddo. I have nursed Bry to sleep pretty much every night of his almost 9-month life. And I scoff at the books that say to put babies down to sleep drowsy, but awake, so they can "teach themselves" how to fall asleep. Bry has not read the same books, and is not convinced that this is the way to go. But nursing has always been a magic bullet - he conks out in 10 minutes and I'm free to twiddle my thumbs and do sudoku for the rest of the evening. This is totally how I spend my free time. I'm nothing if not lazy, and I'd opt for the easy way to get him to sleep over the "correct" way to get him to sleep every time.
But, one night, the sleep deprivation that Bry had accumulated over 2 weeks of poor sleep had caused him to be a lot more keyed up at bedtime and nursing was having no effect on his wound up self. After 30 minutes of crocodile wrestling Bry while he was nursing, I gave up and put him in his crib. Being no fool, he promptly started to scream. I told Bry it was time to sleep, as Steve and I had been doing in the middle of the night. (The books also say he's supposed to understand this if we simply repeat it enough. But they don't account for babies whose native language is Swahili, as Bry's appears to be.) And the screaming continued.
10 minutes later I went back in, patted his back, and told him it was still time to sleep. I left, and Bry threw his pacifier at my retreating body. Or, he just pushed it out of his crib, but either way, his timing was impressive.
Fast forward 10 minutes. I went back in, and this time, feeling desperate, I took off the t-shirt I had been wearing (sorry readers who don't know me very well - I'm not usually in the habit of randomly stripping). I handed it to Bry, told him it was time to sleep, and watched dumbfoundedly as he dropped onto his side, cuddled the shirt, and closed his eyes. He started murmuring a little to himself as I made my stealthy exit across the treacherously creaky wood floor in the nursery.
I strained to hear for noises coming from the nursery, but that was it. Bry slept the rest of the night (although I still woke up at 4:30 am, and have every night since - curse you maternal hormones or whatever it is that is causing this insomnia). He's slept every night since then too. Every now and then he'll wake up briefly and fuss for a few minutes, after which HE PUTS HIMSELF BACK TO SLEEP. Cue angel chorus. (And take that, sleep books.)
I have no idea what it was that finally helped Bry to sleep a little better again. But I'm not taking any chances. My t-shirt has stayed in his crib ever since then. And if it happens to find its way into his suitcase when he heads off to college (if you're reading this in the future Bry, no commuting from home to college, OK), so be it.
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1 comment:
That's what got our kids sleeping through the night too, when they were going through a "I'm refusing to sleep at all" phase--putting them to bed awake. It only took a night or two, and they stopped getting up during the night. I think it's that whole being able to roll over and go back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night thing, which they don't quite get when they depend on you to fall asleep.
I must say though, let him him have the shirt!
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