The Boy Who Wouldn't Sleep: Part IV

Welp, we recently hit yet ANOTHER road bump with Little Dude's sleep issues. If you saw, he was recently  visited by the longest cold ever.  Seriously, he was sick for over 3 weeks, waking up with coughing fits 2-3 times a night. It was awful because we couldn't give him any relief except to hold him and offer him water.  There's nothing worse than feeling helpless when your child is sick and in pain. *sigh*

Remember this? Poor guy..

Needless to say...he totally regressed.  After he got better he was still waking up 3 times a night expecting us to lay down with him until he fell asleep again. While Joe tried to help as much as he could...it was mainly my big prego butt in there getting up off the floor.  It was absolute MURDER on my back.  I remember laying there one night bawling silently, trying to choke back the sobs, wondering how the hell I was going to do this with two children. I made a decision right then that something had to give...

My solution? Cry. It. Out. I can see some of you rolling your eyes right now like, 'Duh, lady...why the hell didn't you try that before?' Well, dear friends my sweet husband couldn't handle the crying in the middle of the night. I would have two babies on my hands and I couldn't handle the stress of trying to ignore my son's cries and keep my husband calm. Well, he wasn't getting the choice this time, *I* was the one getting up with the kid.  He wasn't looking forward to it..but agreed. We put the crib back together that morning. (Side note: we realized I was just about as far along in my pregnancy as I was the FIRST time we put the crib together)

Blast from the past! These are from when we first put his crib together...




Little dude was pretty excited about his crib being back. He wanted to play in it with his stuffed animals, he read books to himself, I was feeling pretty optimistic. When bedtime came, we read his stories and then...dun, dun, dunnnnn....crib time. Ugh, he cried and screamed for 'Mama'. Talk about heartbreaking!  I did the modified thing and went in and comforted him after 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, etc. Thankfully Joe was at work that first night. It took Little Dude about an hour to finally fall asleep. He had two wake ups that night with pretty much the same results. I got to give credit to Joe, that first night he ended up getting a migraine and didn't freak out at all. So proud!

The second night was a little better and on the third he actually slept from 10pm to 7am without waking up once!! On the fourth night he actually spent the night and Grandma and Papa's, we gave them the go-ahead to get him to sleep however they needed too. He ended up falling asleep on Papa and sleeping the entire night (not surprising for my little snugglebug).  We expected some backlash for that but for the most part...Little Dude is sleeping from 9pm to 6-7am.  He might wake up once but usually is back to sleep in 20 minutes. Praise Buddha!

My sweet sleeping boy...

Although I'm getting up every hour to go to the bathroom at this point so I'm not reaping the benefits as much as I'd like, it's still amazing. After 20 months of wrestling with sleep issues, using every technique available, it turned out revisiting CIO was our solution, I think the age difference and not nursing this time help tremendously. Also, I really, really think this will help with the coming baby and new house, my little man is going to have a LOT of adjusting and I'm glad he's getting some sleep in a place where he feels secure. I should also note that he still sleeps on the floor for naps, we tried CIO for naps but with all the construction going on right outside his window during the day I don't blame him. I think we'll tackle that one once we're moved into our house.

I think it's time for a celebratory funky prego dance...join me won't you? 

Oh...and somehow THIS happened along the way.
From one kid in our bed to another...