I will never take consecutive sleep for granted again! I thought I was so lucky when at one month Carter was sleeping through the night without so much as a peep-11pm-7am! This all changed shortly before we went to Nashville (over MLK wknd in January), so it has been at least a month now of non-consecutive sleep. Every. Night.
All we really have to do each time he wakes up is put the pacifier in his mouth and shhhh him and he'll go right back to sleep. I'm not sure if I fall into either camp of the cry-it-out (CIO) vs attachment parenting (AP) method-I usually let him cry for about 5 minutes before I go in and soothe him. I never pick him up (which is consistent with the CIO method). Sometimes he will fall back asleep, but 90% of the time, he just starts crying harder until I go in there. I don't know what to do-I know it is important for babies to be able to self-soothe, but it's really hard to let him cry longer than 5 minutes, plus I don't know if I really believe its good to let them do that. Maybe it would be good to try straight up CIO for a week or so just to see if it works. If not, I'll just survive I guess.
I don't know what it is!! It's not hunger because he is very easily soothed if he wakes between when he goes to bed (now 8pm) and 7am. After 7am, if he is crying, he is usually unable to be soothed by anything else and that's how I know he's hungry. Now that he's rolling over to his belly, it has added a whole new dimension-he ALWAYS immediately rolls to his belly when he's put down in his crib, and he will usually fall asleep that way (Which of course freaks me the heck out, but I called the pediatrician and she said if they can roll themselves over its ok to let them sleep like that), but then he'll wake up, realize he's on his belly and freak out because he still hasn't figured out he can roll back yet. That is fun. We used to go in there and roll him back over, just for him to roll right back to his belly again. We've had better luck now just putting the pacifier in his mouth and rubbing his back while he's still on his belly.
I thought that maybe the reason he kept waking up was because he was on his belly, so I tried to put him back in the Fisher Price rock and play which he slept in for the first couple of weeks of his life-that way he couldn't roll over. However, he still woke up the same amount of times. So its not the rolling.
I thought for a while that it could be teeth, but its been a long time that he's been biting his hands, drooling and waking up, and there's no teeth to be found.
Arrgh I just don't know why he's doing it!! He used to be such a good little sleeper. :(
I know I'm lucky that even though we are woken up multiple times per night (between 2 and 7!!) by his crying, he usually goes right back to sleep and doesn't stay awake and cry or anything like some babies. But the multiple sleep interruptions are sooo hard and I feel like death when I wake up! Luckily, he usually will keep going back to sleep until 10am ish, so it gives me a chance to sleep longer than usual to make up for the interruptions. Except for on days when we need to be somewhere! Those majorly suck. Waking up a sleeping baby hurts me to the core-it feels so wrong!!!
It's not a problem of him going to sleep-he goes to sleep awesome. We have a bedtime routine which is key-I nurse him, then we read a book, then I sing "you are my sunshine" to him, then I put him in his crib awake with the mobile and white noise machine. He always falls asleep within minutes and doesn't make a peep. That part is awesome. He generally doesn't wake up for the first time until 2am-ish either, so the first part of sleep is usually really good....IF I can get myself to go to bed early! (Which I usually can't!)
I guess maybe I'll try CIO this week and see what happens...I'll report back. ;-)
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