Ian hates sleep. Every kind of sleep -- naptime sleep, bedtime sleep, 4:00 am sleep, car sleep. Lindsay (the nanny) fights with him all day to get him to stay down long enough for his naps. I fight with him all night to stay asleep more than an hour and a half at a time. Needless to say, Lindsay is probably ridiculously frustrated and I am definitely ridiculously sleep deprived.
It wasn't always this way. I have a very clear memory of staying up until 2:00am with our friends one night when Ian was about 8 weeks old. That's laughable now.
I am in unfamiliar territory here. Joe was a huge napper, and from like 10 weeks old was sleeping 10 hours at a time. We may have had some sort of sleep problem with him around this age that I just don't remember (it's funny what you forget), but all I remember about Joe is that he loved sleep from the very beginning.
So, those of you with kids who hate sleep, please give me any advice you have. I vaguely remember a couple of you mentioning that your kids had sleep regression at similar ages (my whole life is sort of a fog right now). Is this is a phase or a character trait? Is there anything I can do to keep him down longer that I'm not already doing? He's still eating three times a night on bad nights, and twice on good nights. Is this a breastfed baby thing I can't avoid? We start rice cereal soon, but I hear it's a wives tale that that will help. But tell me your experience.
I will try anything. I need SLEEP!
Oh Katie, yes Zoë had the 4 month sleep regression and it SUCKED! She too was EBF (exclusively breast fed) and so we expected her to wake more since formula fed babies supposedly slept longer. But this was altogether frustrating, I would look at Ben sleeping in bed and literally plot his demise!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, on to the advice portion. My mom and father in law kicked it old school and recommended giving her a little rice cereal in her bottles. This advice is strictly off the record since most Dr's won't recommend it...not for health reasons, but because they're afraid that baby won't learn to eat from a spoon if he's eating cereal from a bottle. Well, I can testify that that's not true Zoë eats from a spoon and fork like a champ!
So ever since she was cleared to start cereal (at 4 months) I started thickening up her late afternoon and evening bottles. It worked wonders and at 5 months she was sleeping through the night (10-12 hours) and has been ever since!