Since he was born, A has been sleep­ing in our room. He slept in a pack n play for a while. Then, for a while, he slept with us. Then, back into the pack n play. Last week, we decided to move him into a crib in the same room as K. I thought that it would be a rough tran­si­tion for A. He’s always been a baby who needed to be close to Jason and to myself. I fig­ured it would take two good weeks before we could tell how things were going. Well, he sur­prised us. After a cou­ple ini­tial strug­gles, he has done just won­der­fully. He nurses. Then, Jason takes him to bed where he lays down and falls asleep. K has been strug­gling with the tran­si­tion more though. Unfor­tu­nately, I think this came at a bad time for him. He’s also at a stage where he’s kind of ready to start potty learn­ing. He’s not able to get through the day with­out a nap, but if he does take a nap, then he strug­gles to fall asleep. I think that hav­ing both of those things to deal with and this tran­si­tion of A mov­ing into his room has been tough on him. Poor guy. I’ve been try­ing to give him some extra love and mommy time. He has ramped his nurs­ing up, too. Now, I just have to laugh at my wor­ries a few months ago that he wouldn’t still be nurs­ing at 3. I think he nursed 5 or 6 times yes­ter­day, and 3 or 4 today. Some­times, I won­der if A will wean before K.

Yuck. I do not like those tran­si­tions. Going from three naps to two didn’t seem to be too tough. Going from two down to one is not pretty at our house. Lately, A has been fight­ing his morn­ing nap. He used to go down okay, and then about three hours later, he’d take his after­noon nap. Well, in the last week, the morn­ing nap has become a strug­gle. So, for the past few days, we have tried to go with­out it. Nei­ther option is great. Today, A had a 8 minute nap on the way to town to get gas and go to the library. Then, he was pretty sleepy dur­ing lunch, so I laid him down think­ing that he should sleep for at least an hour or two. Well, after forty-five min­utes, he was up. I tried to help him go back to sleep, but he didn’t think that was a good idea. So, right now, we’re at 12 months old, awake from 7am to 7 or 8pm, and 1 hr of sleep give or take 10 min­utes. Maybe tomor­row will be bet­ter?
I keep try­ing to remind myself not to get too frus­trated, because as with any­thing else at this age, it’s a phase and it can change overnight. Hope­fully tonight is that night!

I think it’s been pretty obvi­ous in pre­vi­ous posts that A has not made it a pri­or­ity to spend any great amount of time asleep either at nap­time or at night. In fact, there have been times when I’ve won­dered if even as a teenager he would be wak­ing ever hour or two for some­thing. I know that’s not going to hap­pen, but some­times it’s hard to see fur­ther ahead than the next day or week or month.

So, in a (suc­cess­ful) effort to get more sleep, we decided that we would start sleep­ing with A in our bed. There were def­i­nitely mixed reviews on our deci­sion, although we weren’t really ask­ing for oth­ers’ opin­ions. We heard things like “Oh, do you really want to start that?” “That will be a hard habit to break.” “Oh, you should get so much more sleep that way!” and a few other vari­a­tions of those sen­ti­ments. After about six months, I ended up sleep­ing on the couch for sev­eral days while I suf­fered through some pretty annoy­ing aller­gies. A slept in his bassinet in our room for those nights and seemed to do bet­ter than he had been in our bed, so we went with his cues and kept him in there.

Because we were a sleep shar­ing fam­ily, I have been read­ing other people’s thoughts on co-sleeping and sleep shar­ing with a dif­fer­ent point of view lately. I have been notic­ing that there are usu­ally a few peo­ple in any dis­cus­sion or debate on this topic who offer the “I knew some­one who slept with their chil­dren, and now they are four and seven and still can’t sleep well” point of view. Hop­ing that wouldn’t be me, I got stuck think­ing about it over and over.

One day, I real­ized some­thing. Many par­ents who sleep with their chil­dren, don’t set out to have that hap­pen. I think a lot of par­ents visu­al­ize a child com­ing home from the hos­pi­tal, sleep­ing in the bassinet for a cou­ple weeks or months, and then sleep­ing in their room after that. That’s what I thought would hap­pen. It did not. So, many par­ents who sleep with their chil­dren start out doing so because their chil­dren are not great sleep­ers. They sleep with them because it’s the only way any­one gets any sleep. They have a fam­ily bed for a while, then even­tu­ally, the child goes on to sleep in their own crib or bed. Will this child sud­denly become a great sleeper? Prob­a­bly not. Will they still strug­gle get­ting to sleep or stay­ing to sleep? Maybe. Will they be a “bad” sleeper? Pos­si­bly. Will the fact that they are not a good sleeper or some may even say bad be because they shared a bed with their par­ents for a cou­ple weeks or months? No, not in my opinion.

Well, I did the elim­i­na­tion diet for a few days, and I saw no results. I ate only chicken and rice. To be hon­est, I don’t even really like chicken all that well (unless it’s a spicy chicken sand­wich from Wendy’s with mayo on it), and now the thought of that chicken makes me a lit­tle queasy. Yuck.

So, for­tu­nately, it appears that A does not have food aller­gies (other than the pre­vi­ously men­tioned dairy allergy or sen­si­tiv­ity). This means he won’t have to spend his life ana­lyz­ing every bite that enters his mouth and won­der­ing if he is going to have reac­tion or if it will be okay. I won’t have to dress him in a shirt that say, “I have severe food aller­gies. Please ask my mommy before you give me any food” at fam­ily gatherings.

Unfor­tu­nately, we really don’t have any leads on the fussi­ness, rest­less­ness, or lack of sleep. I feel like I’m walk­ing a line. On one hand, if there’s some­thing that is wrong and both­er­ing him, I want to know. On the other hand, if he’s sim­ply not a good sleeper, and he never will be, I hate to drag him from one appoint­ment to another, from one diet to another, and from one tech­nique to another. I guess I have to decide at what point I just need to sit back and be okay with not know­ing why he doesn’t sleep and why he cries. That’s a hard thing for a mom though.

When I started NaBloPoMo, I was a spo­radic blog­ger at best. At worst, I some­times let my blog go for *cough* months *cough cough* with­out writ­ing any­thing. After NaBloPoMo, I was pretty ener­gized as far as blog­ging goes. I saw how quickly and eas­ily I could put some­thing up. I liked the feed­back I got from com­ments and friends and fam­ily. What could stop me from blog­ging 20+ times a month, right?

My son.

I’m not try­ing to say that in a mean way. He is sim­ply a high needs baby, and he takes a lot of time and energy to par­ent. If you’ve read my pre­vi­ous blogs, you know that I’ve been deal­ing with a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and some sleep issues. Well, we are still deal­ing with the dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and sleep issues. I have tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet with the same results each time. A cries and screams while arch­ing his back for 30–45 min­utes. Not worth it. The sleep issues have changed a bit though. When A was younger, I was often up with him for 30, 45, 60, or 90 min­utes while he was fig­ur­ing out that night just isn’t the time to be up and play. Thank­fully he seems to have real­ized that night isn’t a good time to play and be up. He has, how­ever, gone from wak­ing 2–4 times a night to wak­ing 7 times or more.

In talk­ing with some other mom friends of mine, they sug­gested that since he has a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, he may also have other sen­si­tiv­i­ties that affect his sleep. For a few months now, I’ve con­sid­ered this and ignored the pos­si­bil­ity. I finally decided to do some­thing about it. Unfor­tu­nately for me, that some­thing is the Elim­i­na­tion Diet. So, for the past 2 days, I’ve eaten noth­ing but chicken and jas­mine rice. I’ve had noth­ing but water to drink. My mom friends told me that if this was going to be some­thing that worked for A, I would notice results in 1–3 days. Well, last night, we did not notice any results. I’m hop­ing for some sort of change tonight.

In all the infor­ma­tion that I read about the elim­i­na­tion diet, I have read that it takes up to two weeks for it to work. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I can do chicken and rice only for two weeks. I don’t love chicken, and I’m start­ing to hate rice (well, not hate). I am not really sure what to do, though. I can’t keep get­ting up with him five or more times a night (Jason usu­ally gets up the other 2–3) and par­ent­ing both him and K dur­ing the day, but I also don’t know if I can sur­vive while tan­dem nurs­ing if all I’m eat­ing is rice and chicken. It doesn’t seem healthy for long term nutrition.

So, that’s mostly why I haven’t been all that active on my blog. Hope­fully, I will be able to increase my post­ing fre­quency as A gets older, starts solids in the next month or two, and gives me some cute funny sto­ries to post.

I hap­pen to agree with this post quite strongly, but I know that there are oth­ers who dis­agree just as strongly as I agree. Any­way, I find it good food for though, prob­a­bly because I like what she’s saying.

This year for Thanks­giv­ing, we went to my in-laws’ house. It was a lot of fun, and I love spend­ing time there. On Thurs­day, it was our fam­ily (4), Jason’s par­ents (2), his older sis­ter and her fam­ily (3), and his brother and his fam­ily (5). So, in one house we had 8 adults and 6 kids and a new puppy. It was def­i­nitely a loud, ener­getic day. We stayed overnight and yes­ter­day Jason’s younger sis­ter and her fam­ily (5) came over, so there was 10 adults and 9 kids and a new puppy in the house.

When we’re there, there is so much going on and K doesn’t take good naps. He plays well while we’re there, but as we were leav­ing I noticed that he had cir­cles under his eyes. We got home tonight and he was pretty tired. We put him to bed at 7, and we haven’t heard from him since. Now, I’ll say again that I had a very good time and I love see­ing Jason’s fam­ily, but I’m not sure exactly what I did that made me so tired, but I fell asleep in the car on the way home and did the head bob for at least 25 miles.

*yawn* Both boys are in bed, and I’m think­ing it might be time to join them.

I need to know how to get my baby to go back to sleep after he wakes to nurse at 2am! He’s done this now off and on since he was a cou­ple weeks old. He’ll go to bed, sleep a few hours, and wake up to eat. I keep the light off, take him to the nurs­ing chair, nurse him with­out look­ing or talk­ing to him, don’t change his dia­per unless he’s dirty, and swad­dle him. Then, when he’s done nurs­ing he’s either happy as a clam and want­ing to hang out for a cou­ple hours, or he’s fussy and fight­ing sleep for a cou­ple hours (like last night).

He’s 3 1/2 months old, so I know he needs to wake and nurse, but I can’t fig­ure out what to do dif­fer­ently to show him that it’s night and he should be going back to sleep after he eats! It’s not every night, and as far as I can tell there are no indi­ca­tors ahead of time to tell me if he’ll go back down right away or not. He also don’t sleep well dur­ing the day. He takes 4ish 30–45 minute naps through­out the day. I don’t think that’s too much. There are some­times when I will lay down with him and he’ll sleep for 1 1/2 or 2 hours, but that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily help or hurt his night sleep­ing either.

Last night, I fed him, burped him, rocked him, swad­dled him, walked, bounced, and cried (yes, I cried, too). Finally after being up close to 2 hours, I got him to sleep, or so I though. I laid him down and he woke up imme­di­ately and started cry­ing. Jason got up with him and walked, cud­dled, rocked, shushed, and held him for about another 40 min­utes before he finally crashed. Poor baby.

Com­ments are open to any­one with any ideas!

Sleep­less in North Dakota.