our little man

7.09.2007

phew

our typically great sleeper had a crazy stretch of bad nights the last couple of weeks, but i'm happy to say that he seems to be over it and back to himself now. i still don't know exactly what the problem was, but i'm assuming it had something to do with the combination of a growth spurt and teething... for about a week, ben was waking up all night long. i mean, he was literally not going more than two hours before waking up again - sometimes only sleeping for 45 minutes before waking up and crying. i tried everything - feeding him, rocking him, dancing with him, even bringing him back to our bed to cuddle a couple of times. he has always slept so well, so it was pretty discouraging - and frustrating not to be able to "fix" him. i was worried that he was really uncomfortable and i couldn't do anything about it, and i was worried that he wasn't getting enough sleep. not to mention the fact that i was really in need of a nap myself after a few of those nights.

finally, we decided that we needed to try harder to get him sleeping on his own again - and putting himself back to sleep when he wakes. after putting him down one night last week, he woke up and fussed. earlier in the week, he was waking up and just wailing - really upset. this time he was just whining a bit... so we decided to just let him fuss. we wouldn't let him get hysterical or anything, but let him fuss for a bit and realize that he could comfort himself. i'm really *not* an advocate of the "crying it out" method, so even hearing him fussing in there was hard for me (and adam, too) but really it was only a few minutes until he was asleep.

since then, he's been sleeping great again. he's only waking up once in the night to nurse - and is getting nearly 12 hours of sleep. i wish i knew what the problem had been, but i just feel so much better now that he's back to normal.

posted at 1:48 PM by aimee // 0 comments