Rolling Over...Sleep Returns

Well, an update on what is new with our little man and how things have been going the past 2 weeks since he has been at “school” aka Day Care.  Early in the morning on April 3 (we’re talking 4:00 AM, so you could consider this middle of the night…I usually do J), Mr. Huck started rolling over in his crib with his Woombie on—for those of you who know about the Woombie (one of the greatest baby inventions ever in my opinion), you know it totally contains a baby’s arms so they can’t flail about, so this is not necessarily a good thing once they start rolling over onto their tummies.  And because Huck didn’t have use of his arms, the little guy just laid there face down in his crib crying into his mattress.  You can imagine how discouraging this must be for someone so helpless.  Well luckily, I was right in the room after it happened, so no need to worry that my child was being neglected and in danger.  I had just put him down after feeding him and was watching him to make sure he was good before I stepped out of the room when sure enough he let his binker fall out of his mouth. But instead of just crying for it, he went in search of it with his mouth—dive-bombing his mattress.  Now this is not new for us, but it is a sight to see.  Back when we were trying to let him “Cry It Out”, he discovered how he could scoot around his crib by arching his back and bending and straightening his legs.  He would get so upset while crying that he would just move in circles all around his crib.  After we gave up on the CIO, we would start him at one end of the crib at the beginning of the night, and by the morning he would be at the opposite end and horizontal in his crib.  It was at this point that I knew we would soon be saying goodbye to the WoombieL.  He was doing a similar move to try to get to his binker on this particular night.  So when he rolled all the way over on his own in the Woombie, I took it off and tried to get him to go to sleep without it; I even tried just using a Swaddle Me sleep sack from his chest down.  But our little monkey’s Moro reflex is just so great that no matter what, when he sleeps on his back, he is constantly waking himself up from startling himself.  Enter the swaddle and swing. 

I had been swaddling Huck and strapping him into his swing to take naps and it seemed to do wonders.  He was taking nice 3 – 3 ½-hour naps in the morning and was developing his afternoon nap nicely with this technique.  So by 4:30 AM on this particular day, I knew what I had to do if I wanted to go back to sleep for a couple hours:  move him to his swing.  I did and the little guy slept until about 8 AM when we had to wake him so that we could get him to day care and get on with our day. 

The following night, we decided to skip even trying the crib because we knew that when he would roll over, he would either lie facedown crying into the crib or look up like he was doing tummy time, there was no turning his head and laying it down to sleep.  Huck was showing tired signs around 5:30/6:00 after his bath, because since going to school, he doesn’t really nap near as much as he did when he was just with me.  I was still working, and he was hanging out in his bouncy seat (which also happens to be his swing seat when it’s not on the swing stand) while Daddy was getting supper ready, so I just moved his seat to his swing base, which at this point was in our living room, and tucked a blanket around him so he would have felt like he was being swaddled, thinking he would just take a little nap while we ate dinner.  That “little” nap turned into a 4 ½-hour nap!  At this point, I fed him, swaddled him, and put him back in the swing for the duration of the night.  We had set the baby monitor up on him in the living room so that we could see him just in case…granted our bedroom is on the same level and maybe 50 feet from where he was, so really we’d be able to hear if anything happened, but nonetheless, it was nice to be able to watch him from our room if we wanted to check on him.  After putting him down, this time for the night, he slept until 3 or 4 AM!  Then again until 8!  The following night was even better; Matt and I went to bed around 8:30 because we were so tired and weren’t awakened until around 4:30!  Why didn’t we do this before?!?! We were getting sleep and our little person was too! 

We have since moved the swing into Huck’s room so that we can still live normally in our living room in the evenings and have just recently started to try to acclimate him back to his crib by getting him to sleep there for a little each night if we can—he is rolling over onto his belly, but has now learned and is continuing to learn how to lay his head down on its side to fall back asleep when he does this.  Yes, I know…”back is best,” “back to sleep,” but I am not going to go in and move him if he rolls in his sleep and will stay asleep or put himself back to sleep.  Now, he hasn’t made it a whole night in his crib yet without the Woombie, and there are nights like last night, when the crib wasn’t happening at all—and believe me, we gave it a good try last night, but he was too cranky for it.  So we put him in his swing and he slept from about 7 PM – 6:50 AM…yep, you heard me right!  He slept almost 12 hours and didn’t even wake up to eat or for his binker!  I had been trying to get him to eliminate these night feedings because I knew from talking with our Doc that he didn’t really need them anymore and if he could, he would be fine to stop them. So for about 3-4 nights when he would wake in his swing, I would simply go in and put his binker back in his mouth and he would fall back asleep.  I knew he was ready for this because when I would get him out at his 3:00/4:00 AM wake to feed him, he would eat a little, then fall back asleep and wasn’t all that interested in eating. 

As I’m sitting her writing, he is asleep in his crib, and I have had to go in a couple times to put the binker back in his mouth, so we’ll see how long it lasts tonight.  I typically give myself a certain number of times to go in his room (usually around 5 depending on what time it is—if I want to go to bed, it’s probably fewerJ) before I decide to swaddle and swing.  So at least for a couple nights, sleep returned to us.  I’m sure it won’t last long, because before we know it, there’ll be another milestone that will cause a disturbance, but until then, I’ll take what we are getting.  It could also help that Mr. Huck only sleeps about 60-90 minutes at school each day…if we’re lucky.  So, unfortunately, the naps aren’t the greatest anymore, but the continuous sleep at night in the swing at least for now, is working for us!