Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Sleeping

Dean is going through another change and having difficulty falling asleep at night. I'm sure this is because of all of our changes in his routine during the past few weeks more than anything on his part. Every once in awhile he changes, and I find myself back on the internet searching for advice on the best way to help him fall asleep for the night as though I'll find some new piece of information or a black and white manual of the one right way. I never do.
I know this is unimportant in the broader scheme of things and that I will never figure it out. If Dean is anything like myself or my brothers, this will be an age old problem, taking on different faces over the years. Right now it is wanting to play with mommy when she's rocking him to sleep, or crying if placed in the crib to go to sleep on his own (does this well during naptime with no crying). Later down the road it will be asking for water or wanting to climb out of bed to play with toys. As a teenager, I was still difficult as I wanted to stay awake reading or worrying about life in general.
I also know that most parents can tell me a way that worked for them, but they wondered at the time if it was the right way to do things. That said, I'd still love to hear your methods.
Please don't misunderstand. This is not something I am overly stressed about. Tonight my method is to create a new post on my blog while he talks himself to sleep. Of course we've been at it an hour and he's only now calm enough to talk himself down.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't really remember with Nathan and Zoey, but it seems like they were pretty easy. I probably only think that because I worked a split shift so wasn't home most of the evenings when it was bedtime.

Nathan had a bottle with him to go to sleep with (this was before it was such a horrible, horrible thing to do). Zoey nursed until she was a year old so slept partly in our bed but mostly in her crib. I couldn't handle letting them cry it out, so they were either patted or rocked to sleep. They also really loved their Winnie the Pooh mobile. It would mesmerize them into sleep.

Allison slept with us and hardly ever in her crib. She still doesn't sleep in her own bed every night, so you can see how well that worked for us.