Thursday, October 23, 2008

Sleep

As a new mom, I'm not supposed to really expect much quality sleep for awhile. Lucky for me, I've actually been way above the 'norm' for sleep for a person in my situation. Jacob transitioned to his big boy bed a couple of weeks after Luke was born and did great for the first couple of months. Luke began sleeping 6-8 hour stetches pretty consistently at 7 weeks old. Life was good.
Thankfully, except for a few exceptions, Luke has not regressed in his sleeping patterns. We get 7-8 hour stretches on a regular basis, and 9-10 hours a couple of times a week. So why am I complaining? Well, he hasn't really "improved" in the past 8 weeks. I mean, sure, we get the occasional 9 hr+ stretch of sleep, but he isn't there consistently. I guess I just expected some improvement from 7-15 weeks. I'm sure he'll get there, but who knows when. With Jacob, when he woke up during the night, a pacifier worked to get him back to sleep instead of feeding him. Since Luke won't take a pacifier, that trick won't work. I've tried just rocking him back to sleep, but he doesn't want any of that - he's ready to eat when he wakes up. The past week or so he's also taken a bit more time to get back to sleep after he eats during the night. He's wide awake and ready to play. I, on the other hand, am not ready to play in the wee hours of the morning. Good thing he is so stinkin cute. :)

As for Jacob, sleep in general has been a bit of a problem for us over the past month or two. Although he isn't upset when we put him down for a nap or bed, he doesn't go down easily. Instead, he is out of his bed the moment we walk out of the room and starts playing and making all sorts of noise. We let some quiet play slide by, but once he gets riled up, we have to put a stop to it. Thankfully, after an hour, he is normally asleep. Bedtime is still ~7:30pm, though it is often times 8:30pm before he's finally asleep. Now, if that was the end of the sleep trouble, I wouldn't complain. I figure that is fairly typical of a 2 year old. The bigger issue is the waking up in the middle of the night. He wakes up crying, sometimes a 1-3 times a night. We go in there and the tears are usually fake - he knows it will get us in there. He happily says "Hi Mommy, when I walk in." Most of the time, he is looking for his pappy (I know, it should be gone by now!) or his doggy. Sometimes he just wants to know we are there. Last night, he somehow fell out of his bed and onto the floor. Quite a feat with bedrails on the bed. Couple all that with a 6am wakeup and none of us are getting the best sleep. At least he can't open doors yet, so we don't have an overnight visitor in our bed. Things could be worse, so I won't complain...at least not too much.

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