The day I went back to work from maternity leave was the day the baby started sleeping throughg the night. It was like magic. From that day forward we have stayed with the same basic routine. I come home from work and play while dad cooks dinner. We eat and then go for an hour walk. By that time it's usually around 8pm and we start getting a bath ready. We do bath time, good night moon and a bottle. He always fell asleep eating the bottle, but it was never an issue because he slept through the night. This was our routine for months.
And then we started teething.
And got a virus.
In the same week.
He was waking up so often throughout the night for about a week straight that I started letting him sleep in our bed if he woke up after 4am. I figured it was just for two hours until my alarm went off and mommy needed to sleep because regardless of what happened overnight, I still had to work the next day.
He did go back to his normal sleep-through-the-night-self. However, for the last week, he has been waking up in the middle of the night screaming his head off. He does not calm down until we either put him in our bed or feed him. I really don't thing he can be that hungry, but I do think he has no idea how to soothe himself since we have trained him to only fall asleep with a bottle.
But in our defense, this routine has worked so well for us for the past four months that we didn't really have a reason to do anything differently. So now we are trying to train a 7-month-old how to fall asleep on his own...
1 comment:
We do Goodnight Moon every night too! And a bottle right before bed, but the burping activity usually keeps him awake. So if he's still awake after we put him in bed and give him a paci, I read Goodnight Moon (again) while standing over his crib, showing him the pictures this time. Then I pat his little belly, tell him goodnight, and walk out of the room. I watch him on the monitor and it takes him about 2 minutes to fall asleep on his own. Sometimes 5. No crying. He just needs the stillness I think. I had to train myself to just leave him alone and not obsess over watching him fall asleep while standing over him. Teething and colds are totally going to mess up our good thing though. I just know it.
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