I'm open to theories. Henry is all discombobulated and in an attempt to reassure other parents and expose a sliver of the experience of parenting young children, we're going to treat this like a case.
Overall his sleeping has been pretty good this week. Last weekend we made the transition to 2 naps a day and things went pretty smoothly. Wednesday night he slept great-- not a peep until about 7:30 in the morning. Yesterday he had his ped appointment at 11. I picked him up around 10:30 and at that point he hadn't taken his morning nap. After his shots*1 he came home and took a solid 2 hour nap. By about 4:30 i decided to try for a second short late nap because he was clearly getting sleepy/fussy. I swayed a bit with him in his darkened room and turned on his chirping birds. When i laid him down in his crib he arched his back, held his head up, reached and talked to his birdies. I left his bedroom thinking the nap wouldn't happen and when i walked back by a few minutes later he was out cold. He slept a solid 45 minutes and woke at 5:30*2.
Typically our evening routine consists of dinner around 6, then a bath, then nursing and bed by 7. Most nights he's asleep or very drowsy by the time he settles into nursing. Last night he was yukking it up in between drinks-- smiling and laughing at JT, trying to get his attention, talking, just carrying on; no sign of drowsiness. I let him sit with JT for a few minutes and then took him back to his room to try to get him soothed for bed. We were already stretching things at 7:45. I put him down and he clearly expressed his displeasure. He cried, and protested and babbled and carried on until 9 pm when he finally fell asleep. He woke up a few times briefly during the night but was awake fully by 5:15 this morning which makes for one of his shortest overnight stretches since the bad old days*3.
Now here i am trying to sort out what is causing this. Add in the cold medicine*4 i'm on (approved by my doc for nursing moms) that i'm supposed to take at least 4 hours before bed so it doesn't keep me up, and i've got at least 4 theories.
To make matters worse he didn't nap AT ALL today. Not one nap, nothing. Brenda said she tried everything, letting him cry, rocking him, etc. He wasn't fussy though, just wouldn't sleep and kept babbling and talking and laughing.
My money is on a combo effect: the cold medicine affecting H combined with him reaching this new milestone where he talks all the time--literally, he doesn't really coo or fuss much anymore, he just babbles either happily, unhappily, or irately. It's as if in the course of 2 days he reached the protestation milestone. They say milestones can affect sleep (and while i think they're generally physical in nature), that's my story and i'm sticking to it until i collect more evidence.
Feel free to chime in?
No comments:
Post a Comment