Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! We're sleeping. Mostly. And I didn't want to disturb the equilibrium by talking about it. So I've been a bit quiet on the issue lately.
Nevertheless, it seems to be working.
After my last post about the sleep monster, I did manage to get to talk to Tracey. Can I say again how phenomenal she is? She is phenomenal! In the middle of her own crisis, she called me back and made sure we were okay. Helped us tweak what we were doing and brought us to the other side of the problem.
So, it turns out that we were shushing him too much. Crap, I didn't realize there was a "too much" to that. This is why we need Tracey. It seems that Liam has taken the shushing for talking to him and has chosen to argue back. Thus the screaming at us for 3 nights running. Boy do I feel silly. I wish we'd just called her to begin with, instead of thinking we could wait him out. There is no waiting this child out, it appears. So we cut the shushing down. I laugh a little when I think about Tracey's "about every 16 minutes", because 16 is such an odd number. But it made the point. We shush infrequently now. He knows we are here. Now get over it and sleep, buddy boy.
Also, after the couple of times Liam threw up in the beginning, Ray was nervous about him causing himself to throw up again. So he would go in and check on him. He was also giving Liam back his soother when he threw it. You know this goes nowhere good right? Ray had the best of intentions. Now we go in for nothing.
And we have slept through the night for two nights.
But he's a wily little man, my Liam. Instead of giving it to us in the middle of the night, he's now trying both ends of the night. Two nights running he sang, yelled, threw his soother, and generally made a nuisance of himself for 2-3 hours before he would go to sleep. To no avail. Seriously, child? Do you not know that if Mommy and Daddy have it together enough to ignore your efforts to disrupt sleep at 2 am, that certainly your shenanigans at 8 or 9 pm will not move us. We are on to your game, wee man. Best to give it up.
We waited through the two nights. I am not going to say it is over, because I have a feeling with this child it will never be completely over, but it was under an hour tonight.
And then there are mornings. The first night he slept through the night, he woke up at 6:30 am. Now, I am not very happy about 6:30, because I have a personal preference for 7-7:30. We have Xander trained to a 7 am wake up. (My actual internal clock likes 8 am, but 7 will do.) So I did not greet 6:30 am with enthusiasm, but felt I should give the kid a break, because he did sleep through the night. And what would making him fuss or cry or scream in his crib for 30 minutes accomplish anyway?
Yeah, I was about as wrong as a human being can be. This morning we were greeted with a 5:50 am wake up as a result of our lack of insisting he stay in bed until 7 am. And if I was enthused about 6:30 am, you can imagine the joy in me at ten to six. Yeah, not so much. So this morning we bit the bullet and let him cry about it.
Liam's developed a couple of interesting tactics to make us come to him. First there is the soother tossing, which boggles my mind, because I know he loves his soother and really, wouldn't that be like having a whole chocolate cake in your hands and then deciding you were mad at someone and throwing that cake on the ground? Who loses? Not the person you were mad at, for sure. YOU. Liam will eventually figure that out...or be broken of his soother habit. Either way, Mommy and Daddy will win that little battle too. Hopefully he gets that memo soon! The whole soother tossing phenomenon aside, there is also the yelling at the top of his lungs and now he is actually making himself cough and cough to try to get us to go in and check on him. Smart, no? I've actually watched him turn it on and off. Truly an act that should be given an Emmy.
It almost makes me wonder what will be next.
He'll get it. Especially since we are getting better rest than we used to and can wait this out a bit.
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3 comments:
Do you have a video monitor? I long wished I had one when we were dealing with different sleep shenanigans. There were a few times he did just what you described of Liam - turn on a complete act. I always wished I could watch him on the screen because I think it would be hysterical!
Glad you've gotten 2 nights of sleep! I hope this is a third!
Sounds like a step in the right direction! It can only get better right?
Heidi, no video monitor, but it is tempting with this stuff. And yes, we had a third night of sleep. Of course, last night Xander was my resident PITA for sleeping. What's a mom to do? ;)
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