Nursing Your Kids

After our napping ordeal a few weeks ago, the failed Operation Nap Indoors, we moved on to trying to begin an easier, less time intensive bedtime routine. Sam has always been high needs when it came to falling to sleep. I’ve read just about every sleep book in the library. I’ve read Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child, Sleepless in America, Solving Your Child’s Sleep Habits, Nighttime Parenting, The American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child’s Sleep, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer and none of them have really worked.

Different techniques and routines always worked for a while, but then there’d be a growth spurt, teething, a cold, a stomach bug, a separation, or a day without a nap and whatever we’d been doing would stop working and not work again. We’d have good stretches and bad stretches, but the bad stretches were so bad it overshadowed the good. No matter what techniques we used, he could never fall asleep on his own. He always needed us to be hands on.

Co-sleeping began to keep him awake so we had to put that to an end. After he stopped nursing to sleep (which sadly was never a guarantee that he’d stay asleep) he had to be rocked to sleep. Then he got to be too big to be rocked to sleep comfortably. No matter how he moved and adjusted he just couldn’t find a good spot so he had to be cuddled to sleep. That got ridiculously complicated so we decided to get a bed for him hoping to make the cuddling to sleep easier.

But Sam just got more and more demanding. Mama, lie down. Mama, head on pillow. Blanket on. Blanket off. Mama up. Mama, sit. Mama, stay. Mama, lie down. Cuddling him to sleep was taking longer and longer. About a week ago Bob decided to revisit a common technique that had never worked before, a technique that’s in just about every sleep book on the market.

He put Sam in bed, said good night, and stood in the hallway. Sam got out of bed and Bob put him back in. After many rounds and about 45 minutes Sam stayed in bed and fell asleep. Since then, he’s been doing the same thing every night. Now when Bob goes to his gated doorway Sam puts himself back in bed. There’s no more cuddling after the story, no more rocking, no more holding our breath tiptoeing out of his room. The routine still takes 45 minutes, but he seems to be learning.

Last night at about 3 in the morning Sam woke up with a cry. I awoke immediately, and went to his door. Sam was on his way out of bed. I said, “Sam, it’s bedtime. Stay in bed.” He cuddled up at the foot of his bed. I told him to move up and put his head on the pillow. He did. Exhausted, I sat in the glider. Sam said mama a few times and I responded with a soft, “shhhhh.” After a few minutes I got up to use the bathroom and Sam didn’t make a sound. I went back to sleep.