The Evolution of Sleep

By far the most difficult part of being a parent for Nate and I has been the issue of sleep. From the very beginning Nolan would wake up the second you placed him in a crib, pack n play, our bed...or anywhere! We soon learned that if we wanted to get some sleep the easiest way to do that was let him sleep on us. Which we did for 4 months! At first we loved it, but then we started not sleeping as well and Nolan moved around so much, I don't think he was sleeping well either.

At four months we made the big move to the crib. It did not go over very well. He soon learned to sleep on his belly which helped but he wasn't a big fan of the crib. We stuck with it most of the time, at least at night. During the day he almost always slept in his swing, which he loved.

During the night when he woke up (which he did A LOT) I would feed him and then put him back in his crib. Sometimes he would go right back to sleep and other times he wouldn't. You never knew what you were going to get. After a couple months he settled in a bit more and started waking up only twice a night. However, we soon grew tired of this and were ready for our big boy to sleep through the night...

And finally last night it happened!!! Oh, it was glorious! It only took 8.5 months! The previous two nights he had woken up after 2.5 hours and we decided to let him cry himself back to sleep instead of getting him. The first night he cried for 1.5 hours and then fell back asleep for 5 hours. The next night he cried for an hour and then went back to sleep for 5 hours. Both nights after the 5 hour stretches I fed him and put him back in his crib. Last night, he woke up after 3 hours, fussed for 15 minutes and fell back asleep until 6:30! We will see if the little man can keep this up...

My Caged Animal

Nolan is not a huge fan of his crib. He sleeps in it, but as he falls asleep he lets us know that he is not a happy camper. He has now gotten quite good at moving himself around, so he will grab onto the bumper, turn sideways, and try to chew his way out. As you can tell by the picture below he falls asleep sometime during the chewing process...

Sleep

From the time Nolan was born it was pretty clear where he liked to sleep; on mom or dad or cuddled up as close as could be on our sides.  We allowed this.  Not only allowed it, we enjoyed it.  As the weeks passed our boy grew bigger and with the added inches and weight came a lot more movement.  We commented frequently how he could move so much yet be sound asleep.  The more he moved, the less sleep we got.  After awhile it seemed Nolan wasn't sleeping as well either and he was starting to wake up more often during the night.  So a couple of weeks ago we decided to make the transition to the crib.  Once we made the decision we started reading about the different ways to go about getting our boy to sleep in his crib as painlessly as possible (which really means how to do with as few tears as possible, from both Nolan and me).  There are a lot of books out there on this subject, which made me feel better because I can't tell you the amount of time I have thought about sleep since he was born.  Should we put him down?  Is he tired?  Should we wake him up?  Is he napping too short? Too long?  Is he getting enough sleep?  And on and on and on... 

We decided to wait until this week because Nate is off from work.  So last night we went for it. We followed Ferber's method which has you go in at certain time intervals and console them without picking them up.  I must say that it was hard, extremely hard.  Nolan cried a lot.  I cried a lot.  Nate was a trooper and checked on both of us frequently.  Eventually Nolan drifted off for a couple of hours.  Woke up.  Cried some more.  Drifted off for a couple more hours.  Woke up.  Cried.  Repeat.  But, we survived the night!  The first night is always the hardest, right?  And the little man gave me a huge smile when I picked him up from his crib this morning, so hopefully he won't need counseling in years to come because we abandoned him in his crib.  He is in his crib again tonight and hopefully it will involve fewer tears...from both of us.

AWAKE...in the middle of the night

Nolan woke up to eat in the middle of the night which is still pretty common for him.  He normally eats and goes right back to sleep.  Not last night!  Last night he decided it was time to be up for awhile (almost 2 hours!).  He was quite happy and gave Nate and I a lot of smiles.  Eventually he drifted off back to sleep...

Here is Nolan hanging out in bed during the pre-dawn hours: