Sleep

My wife and I have been very blessed when it comes to our boys sleep patterns. For the first 3 months, they slept for 2 hours at a time, had a bottle, would sleep for 2 more hours and so forth. At our 3 month Doctor visit, I asked the Doctor how long before they would sleep through the night. He laughed and told me that we had a while. I guess a week was a while, because the following week, both boys on the same night, started sleeping 6 – 8 hours at a time. Oh, what a beautiful thing.

Then it happened.  At 10 months old, Baby A started waking up at 11:30pm on the dot every night, screaming. So what changed? Was he teething? Was he growing? He wasn’t talking and telling us what was wrong, so we were left to guess. Everyone told us to let him cry it out. Normally, that would be ok. But we live in a townhouse and the next door neighbor likes to beat on the wall when he starts crying. So, that really didn’t help the situation at all. We called our Pediatrician and asked for advice, they too said to let him cry it out, but they also suggested to give him extra food before he goes to bed. That night, we moved Baby A downstairs into our living room, setup the pack and play, put on some classical music, feed him, gave him extra food, kissed him on the head and off we went. 7:00am the next morning, I go downstairs, there he is, sitting up smiling. This goes on for 2 more weeks. A full night sleep.

Then it happened again. Now, we are at 11 months old and he started waking up at 11:30 pm. So for almost a week, every night he would wake up. What changed? He was still downstairs. He was still listening to classical music. He now had 2 more teeth to come through. So what was it? What changed? Well, before calling the Pediatrician, I did some Google searches to see if this was a common issue or not and it was – Read about it here on Baby Center . Was he hitting a milestone? He did just start to walk. There might be a few more teeth coming in. It does look like he is growing. Wait, that might be it. If he is growing, could that mean that he is waking up at 11:30pm, which is 4 hours after he last ate, which is about the time in between his bottles during the day, was he hungry? That night, I gave him 4 oz. of formula and what do you know, he slept through the night.

I am not saying that this will work for you if your child is crying. I’m not a Pediatrician, so always ask them first, which is what we did. But, so far so good. We have given him the extra formula and we are all able to sleep through the night again. Let’s just hope that this continues.

Sleep, it is a wonderful thing.