Tuesday night Colin went to bed at 9pm and ended up waking up 4 times between 11pm and 1:30am. He doesn't just wake up talking like he used to in the morning, he wakes up screaming. After that he finally slept for a little while and didn't wake up again until 5am. I don't know why he's acting like this at night. Our routine hasn't changed at all. I know it could be teething, but EVERY night for over a week now it has been like this... I even gave him some Tylenol before bed and it didn't help at all. I'm pretty sure it's not gas... even when he had gas he slept better than this! A small part of me wonders if he's having bad dreams... but I just can't tell...
I called Colin's nurse and she asked me a bunch of questions. She said it doesn't sound like he's sick or has an ear infection. She thinks that he may have had some tooth pain for a couple nights, and since I picked him up and rocked him back to sleep, he got into a routine of wanting to be held every time he wakes up... Crap... She suggested that we let him cry-it-out... I've never been a huge fan of this method. Especially since he's been such a great sleeper up until now, I never had to deal with letting him cry. I looked up the technique and I'm willing to try it. But only if I feel like he's not sick or hurting for any reason.
I usually rock him to sleep, or on the rare occasion he will fall asleep nursing. If I put him in his crib awake he will start crying after a few minutes. I think he has only gone to sleep on his own in his crib without fussing a few times. So I figure if I'm going to use the cry-it-out method in the middle of the night, why not start using it when putting him to bed...
I decided to try it last night. We did our normal routine, but this time after reading him a story, instead of rocking him to sleep, I put him in his crib, gave him his paci, turned on his music and left the room. He immediately started crying. I waited 5 minutes, went back in and gave him his paci again, rubbed his head, and left the room. He kept screaming, but I waited another 5 minutes before going in and repeating the same thing. I did this every 5 minutes for 20 minutes and after the last time he didn't start crying again. By now it was a few minutes past 9pm, I waited until about 9:30 to check on him and he was sleeping peacefully!! Kevin and I went to bed around 10:30 and Colin didn't wake us up until 6:30am!!!
Tonight we did the same routine but this time he cried for 5 minutes, I went in and gave him his paci and rubbed his head, he cried for about 2 minutes more and then stopped. I checked on him by checking his monitor and he was laying there looking around quietly. I just checked on him 2 hours later and he's sound asleep. :-) I hope he sleeps all night tonight like he did last night!
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