Nighttime Nightmares: And the books that have helped.

We continue to have problems getting Thad to sleep at night. I tried formula for the nighttime feeding. I've tried baby Advil per the doctor's instructions (thinking the problem was teething). No go. We continue to wake up about 4 times per night, I feed him, he falls back to sleep, only to break my heart an hour later when he wakes up and I look at the clock and see how little time has passed. His sleeping habits have changed dramatically over his short life, and with each change, we have to adapt and learn new things. Otherwise this is how he looks when he is "napping".

In the very beginning, sleep simply just didn't happen. He didn't nap. He didn't sleep at night. He was constantly awake and crabby. I was crushed about how hard it was. We struggled for a couple weeks, and several people recommended this book: 

It taught me how to help him fall asleep. We swaddled and shushed and bounced and and used a pacifier. And things got better. He started taking naps. He started sleeping in bigger chunks at night.

But he was no where near sleeping through the night. I read a couple more books. 

This one:

And this one:

Becoming Babywise was nothing but discouraging. It made assumptions about his sleeping skills that we were so far from, that it really didn't even apply. No Cry Sleep Solution was much closer to where we were, and offered some really good suggestions. One of the biggest tips that I pass on to all my friends who are expecting is setting up the right environment for sleeping. Until I read this book, I was making his room dark for any sleeping time...naps and bed time. This book talked about babies lack of that innate sense of daytime vs nighttime: they just haven't had a change to learn that yet. You help that develop by napping with bright light (blinds open) and bedtime in the dark (blinds closed). Sounds simple, and man did it make a difference. When I started doing that, he really started sleeping in bigger chunks at nighttime.

Then we kind of stalled and things have progressively gotten worse again. He no longer only wakes up once or twice a night like he did for a month or so. Rarely does he wake up fewer than 3 times. He wakes up and fusses, and I go pick him up and feed him, he falls back to sleep, and I head back to bed for another hour or so of sleep before we repeat. Let me say, it's getting OLD. Mamma can't function like this. Justin has done some internet research, and it sounds like we need to take the next step that I have been dreading, and instead of getting up to soothe him by nursing him back to sleep, we need to get into the habit of trying to let him get him self to sleep. Which means let him cry. Which means longer awake times during the night. Which probably means some tears from me. BUT long term goal is better sleeping habits for him, which will be better for us all.