Carp-e-Diem !

If anyone has asked us ‘How are you?’ or ‘How is the baby?’ in the last few months, they got an earful about how the baby was waking up 7-10 times per night. His sleep problems have consumed us. He always went to bed with no problems, but couldn’t stay asleep. Toby would handle any wakeups before 3a, and I would take the 3a-8a shift. For me this usually involved me getting out of bed around 3:30a and putting him in his stroller and rocking his stroller nearly continuously until 7:30a. If I stopped rocking, he would wake up and scream.

Toby implemented a night time bottle / comfort weaning regimen about 6 weeks ago. This involved letting Roland cry for 5 minutes before consoling him for 20 seconds. Then let him cry for 10 minutes and console for 20 seconds, and so on. Do not pick up the baby! Rinse and repeat as necessary. The immediate consequences of this program was that he cried for up to 2 hours at a time in the middle of the night (anywhere from 11:30p to 4a) for a number of days. I ended up sleeping (trying to sleep) with my yard work earmuffs on.

The problem with this was that I couldn’t roll over with these things on, so I ended up waking and taking them off. This went on for many weeks, and I despaired of any change. During the day, Roly was a cutest little baby, but at night he turned into a scream machine. Kind of like feeding mogwais after midnight.

I am happy to report that the last 2 weeks have seen significant improvements in Ro’s sleep patterns. At 8p, Ro goes to bed. Toby has an alarm set for 2:30a and she sticks the bottle in his mouth while he is sleeping. Then he will sleep until 7:30a / 8a regularly, sometimes longer. He still cries out in the night, but is able to comfort himself and go back to sleep on his own. We are planning on eliminating the mid-night ‘dream feeding’ next week. Below is a picture that reflects Toby’s hard work and patience.