Saturday, June 21, 2008

Sleeping Log

ok, so here it is..my log of Dean's terrible sleeping habits and my own reactions which I hesitate to make public, but must so that I can bear to get through the next few minutes of screaming kid. As many of you know, Dean has not consistently slept through the night since he was seven months old. Also, he was still taking a bottle to bed with him against many pediatrician's and dentist's sound advice. Then, once or twice a night, he was getting another bottle because he would wake up screaming and I REALLY needed sleep to get up and go to work. For a period of 6 months or so I was doing anything I could to get the poor dear back to sleep because of his multiple and horendous ear infections. He's had none since early March (knock on wood).


Here are some things I've learned about Dean. He is not a child that can be rocked, petted, or patted to sleep. Any interaction for him winds him up instead of down. In the past week or so, even the ever trusty bottle does not help him go back to sleep. He does well with consistency as most children do, and is thoroughly disrupted when daycare and homecare ideas are different.


After trying many different options for my poor boy, we're weaning him from the bottle. When I say weaning, I do not mean slow progression because again we have tried that and it didn't work for him. So, as though he is addicted to cigarettes, the poor boy has to go cold turkey. He only takes a bottle to go to sleep and drinks perfectly well from a sippy cup as it is. Today we started plan Cold Turkey.

Naptime: 40 minutes to sleep (not so bad)
8:00- 1 hour to sleep
10:30- 20 minutes to sleep
2:00- 20 minutes to sleep
2:40- 2 hours to sleep

Needless to say, we have one very tired family.

1 comment:

Julie said...

We too went cold turkey but not with the bottle...with crying it out to sleep. Ryan was waking 2 times a night at 9 months and the pedi said that was absurd. Gee thanks mr. Well it was one long week but we all survived (plus a little extra coffee) and it truly solved our sleep problems.I hope cold turkey works for you too.