We are currently on day three of trying to teach Blake to sleep through the night. We devised a plan to help ease him into this new transition which sounds simple and effective and more painful for us than him…hopefully.
So…here is the thing. Travis and I are sleep fans. I feel I can handle less sleep than him, but not by much. And seriously my husband is absolutely useless if he hasn’t got what he considers enough sleep. This is why I have the short end of the stick and get up every day with the children. It’s because I got so sick and tired of him being grumpy and seriously he would be no good to us or anyone else the days he would get up in the morning first. It wasn’t worth fighting over and it wasn’t worth the extra two hours I got on those days.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t love my sleep though. I can survive happily on seven, but work my best on eight, just like us humans should. Since Blake was born though, my body adapted to six to seven hours of broken sleep. It’s not ideal, but it was working. Blake would sleep till threeish in the morning, take a bottle, then sleep till at least seven when Brook would wake up. It was an okay thing. But, it is time to teach Blake to just sleep till seven like the rest of us and boy this is the fun part. The hardest part about this is the fact that Brook still gets up and wants what she wants at seven. When we were teaching her to sleep, we could just go back to bed once she cried it out. But this time around, not so lucky.
So my fantasic plan is to drop him by an ounce of milk a night until the night where there is no bottle and then hopefully the self soothing will kick in and he’ll put himself back to sleep. It’s a revised version of the cry it out method. So ounce five and ounce four nights were okay, he cried for just a couple of minutes and went back to bed. He woke up earlier than normal, but all in all, it wasn’t bad. Last night was the three ounce night and well that was a bit more difficult. He woke up for it around 4:30am and I let him fuss about the crib until five. Then I gave him the three ounces, in which he sucked down as though he has never eaten before. He promptly started to wail and I put him back in his crib. He wailed until six which is the time that Travis and I agreed upon as his new feeding time. So I fed him and he passed out and is still sleeping. That would be great, but Brook woke up at seven. So, I’ve basically been up since 4:30am and now my eyes are like lead and my body is rebelling.
Ahhhh, this is one part of parenthood that I hate. I know it’s better for the whole family if Blake has a full night sleep, but the process of getting him there is almost not worth it. And the boy won’t take a binkie. That was another savior for us when we were doing this with Brook. She loved her binkie and was fine with that instead of a bottle after a couple of nights. He just spits it out as if to tell us, “what the hell? Do you think I can be fooled by this piece of plastic? I know it isn’t a bottle, now give me the real thing!”
Anyway, this too shall pass…but, until then, I will just be the tired grouchy woman with the two children.
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Did I mention how wussy Travis is about sleep…It’s a sore in my side!