Sleep: A Saga

You all know that we have issues. Sleep issues to be exact. By ‘issues’ I mean, no sleep.

Here’s the progression we’ve gone through the past eight months.

0-3 months: Wasn’t sure there was an issue other than new baby-ness. He nursed constantly day and night and during those months (due to his incredibly loud vocal stamina) I spent every night on the couch or walking around very vigorously comforting him by swinging him in my arms, etc. It was trying. He would wake up and stare at me with his incredibly beautiful blue eyes like ‘hey mommy!’ and I would stop caring about sleep. Then I thought it must be diet and did the TED until I found that it was beans (legumes included. Yes, that means peanuts).

3-6 months: Probably the hardest months of my entire life (perspective, I have had an incredibly awesome and easy life) . He was loud, he was sleepless, he was in pain, I was clueless, I tried everything, I am a solution person and having no solution definitely affected my mood.

6-7 months: We tried new things, I got one or two nights of sleep! But then it went back to struggles. I started dreading nights again. I started crying in the wee hours of the morning again. Cosleeping seemed to work the best despite neither he or I actually enjoyed it. He likes being near someone, but not ‘touching’ much.

7-8 months. Astounded by his crying stamina. He can cry all night. There’s no such thing as cry it out with this kid. Last Friday we took him to the chiro who adjusted him and said he had a lot going in his neck and lower back. No sleep that night. Or the next night….hmmm.

However, something else happened from that chiro visit. He took off. He’s always been pretty progressive mobility-wise but would often crawl a few paces and then lay on his stomach crying. I mentioned that to the chiro and she said he likely has painful gas bubbles that keep him from wanting to continue. That made me sad and was totally confirmed by how he was suddenly going from the living room to the kitchen, pulling up on the coffee table, crawling into his room…..just an incredible leap immediately.

So, just so you all have the full picture on how this affects his sleep for tonight. For the past couple weeks I’ve had his mattress in the farthest corner of the house because he’s effing loud. It was fine because he takes most of his naps on our bed for ease of nursing (his fav nursing position is side laying) and so that Avery can still play in his play/bedroom during Eli’s long naps (which rarely coincide with Avery’s naps). During evenings Eli would sleep in our bed and when we went to bed I’d put him on the mattress (our house is small so he wouldn’t be able to sleep on it while we were up). So tonight I put him in our room and after a while I heard a sound and went to check on him and he was crawling to the top of the bed! What if it had been off the side!?

All this to say, now he and Avery really have to learn how to share their room because Eli needs the crib….

We had them in the same room for a few weeks when Eli was 4 months old but it didn’t go well, at all. Most nights I would fall asleep in the glider with Eli and wake up with Avery climbing on top of us.

Eli’s older now and so is Avery. Avery used to be completely against laying down next to anyone. He’s been like that from birth but last summer he started slowly changing. It all started with a massive cold he and Eli got.

I asked Shane to take this photo because this marks the first time EVER that Avery laid down and slept next to someone, anyone, me.

I’m about to share the possibly least attractive photo ever taken of me….so brace yourselves.

More proof. It’s gotten more and more comfortable for him and I love every second of snuggles.

Anyway, now he is okay with someone laying in his bed with him and this is huge because that means while Eli is crying, I can lay with Avery and keep him calm and sleepy.

So, we put the boys in their respective beds and waited to see what would happen.

A couple minutes went by and I heard them giggling. Avery was in the crib. Oh dear.

Then it happened again.

And again.

Finally, this.

I had to lay down with Avery for a while because when Eli cried he wanted to fix it by giving him his paci, or snuggling with him but I wanted to let him know that Eli was okay, and needed to fall asleep.

It was awesome.

Is awesome.

So I guess we’ll see how the night plays out! Should be interesting. I’m kind of excited because I think it’ll go well.