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| Jacob |
5 am! Actually, I don't especially like to hear anything until about 8 am or even 9 am if I'm truly getting to choose a time (I am sooo not a morning person--I'm pretty sure my body is only half alive at this time!), but hey, I'm a mommy and duty calls :)
So one morning he wakes up at 5 am and I do what I can to put him back to sleep. Then it happens again... and again! and my patience and kind and loving heart isn't so loving any more. I am tired dangit!
I problem solve a bit for a few nights and nothing I do seems to make a difference. This kid has somehow changed his entire sleep routine, to the minute, in one nights time. How does one even do that?!
I decide to try wake to sleep again. It backfires the first couple nights and I am frustrated. Instead of waking up ever so slightly and going back to sleep, he wakes up and stays awake for hours. I am even more exhausted than previously. I decide to leave things alone and see what happens. He wakes up at his usual morning wake time again and I have some hope, then he is back to 5 am (arg!). So I decide to change the timing a bit. I move the wake to sleep to an even earlier time when he will be in a deeper sleep and more likely to nod off back to sleep and also not fully wake up. And it worked! I'm back to my 7:30 sleeper again after a few nights of this. Wake to sleep to the rescue again! Best of all, he is much happier and has less separation anxiety since he started sleeping all the way through the night again.
As you can see, things aren't always perfectly peachy for me. My kids still have the occasional sleep struggles (just like any other kid-don't you be fooled!) and I have to problem solve and use some trial and error to solve the problem.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI just stumbled across your blog and it's the first I have heard of "wake to sleep". I am intrigued. My October 2010 baby is a very inconsistent sleeper. He goes to be easily between 6:45 and 7pm. He might chat to himself, walk around in his crib, roll around with his lovie, etc, for a few minutes. But he doesn't complain.
Come the middle of the night, different story. He is TOTALLY inconsistent. He'll go through a phase where he wakes at 12:15am on the dot. Then he'll have a few nights where he sleeps all night. Then he will have a few nights with 2am wakeups. Etc, etc. And no matter what time the wake up is, he wants to be nursed. Anything other than that results in HOURS of screaming. We tried "cry it out" a few months ago and it's just not for us. He almost always wakes for the day too early- 5:30ish, and is cranky.
Do you think wake to sleep would work for him? I am afraid no, since his wake up isn't always at the same time.
Thanks!
Meredith
Hi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteMy almost 8 month old was sleeping well, until I finally weaned her from her last night feed, which had occurred at about 5 for the past 4 months. At about the same point, I also dropped her third nap. Since then, for about 5 or 6 weeks now, she has continued to wake at 5, and needs a considerable amount of soothing to sleep until 6, but rarely later. Wake to sleep efforts for the past week or so do not appear to be working. What is your advice?