Ok confession time. Kaua has bad sleep habits. He falls asleep nursing on most occassions. On the occassion he doesn't fall asleep nursing, it's rocking and singing to sleep or lulled to sleep while in his carseat when we're on our drive home. What has this resulted in? Well, he cant really fall asleep on his own. We cant just put him in his crib awake when he's tired because he wont fall asleep. He'll play, scream, throw a tantrum and cry, for ever. This also means that when he wakes up at night (apparently all humans wake up through out the night in sleep cycles, but we dont realize we do because we're able to get ourselves back to sleep), he needs his "crutch." This also means that he gets up about 4 times at night (at least) and I have to nurse him back to sleep if I want to get any sleep myself. Did I also mention that he sleeps in our bed after his first or second waking at night because if we put him back in his crib, he'll wake up even more?
Yup, talk about not your ideal sleep situation. So why dont I correct this? Well first of all, I've tried. Nothing works. I know my problem though. We dont have a bedtime routine. My schedule is crazy. I'm not always there when its his bedtime. So he's put to sleep by someone else sometimes. Second, we dont have our own home. So we're not always at the same place when its his bedtime. We're either at my mom's house or my grandma's house or driving home. Third, at each of these houses, we're sharing it with my family, so any cry it out session results in keeping the entire house awake and/or in distress. And let me tell you, my Mom's BF is not so happy when Kaua is up all night crying because he's a light sleeper himself.
So with all of these problems, it's caused me to resort to doing whatever it takes, just to survive. It's also led to Kaua's horrible sleep habits. OH man, what am I to do? Will I be stuck with a toddler who needs to sleep in our bed? I'm planning to have Kaua stop breast feeding at 1 and have been trying to cut down on his day feedings as of now, so that he'll be completely breast free by 1. Will I have to continue breast feeding past 1, especially at night, in order to get him sleeping and keep him sleeping?
sigh.
I was worried about this too. Even though we did cry it out for a bout a week to get Pookah to stop waking up every hour on the hour. That was when he was about 6 or 7 months. Just NOW at 9 almost 10 months has he started to sleep through the night. Most nights. But we are OK with that. Could you maybe cordinate with the rest of your family(or whoever is putting him to sleep) to all do the same thing? To start a bedtime routine? Maybe if everyone does the same thing everynight, he will get better and not need you as much. Good Luck! :)
ReplyDelete