WARNING: The following post is long, all about Asher's sleep habits and contains few pictures of funny stories. If you don't care about Asher's sleep then feel free to just check out this picture and check back later for more funny Asher stories and cute Asher pictures.
You want me to take a nap?!?!Asher is having a few problems sleeping and I have finally decided this is the week that we are going to try and fix the problem.
Here's what's going on...
Before Asher was born Roger and I read a book called
On Becoming Baby Wise, we had heard great things about it and learned a lot about how much sleep a baby needs and how often a baby needs to eat. After Asher was born we followed the basic sleep-eat-waketime routine described in the book. We decided to not do everything the book said for various reasons. When Asher was around 4 weeks old we stopped waking him up in the middle of the night. I would feed him at 7 pm, swaddle him and put him to bed. When I went to bed around 10 pm I would feed him (he didn't really wake up) and then he would go back to bed and sleep until about 5 am. Over the next few weeks this stretched out to almost 7 am. There was never any crying in the middle of the night or fighting with him to go to sleep. During the day Asher followed about a 2.5 to 3 hour routine of eating, playing and sleeping and was generally a good napper.
I'm not sure what happened, but suddenly Asher stopped taking good naps. He would still go to sleep easily, but after 45 minutes he would be wide awake and not interested in sleeping anymore. If you have read
Baby Wise I'm sure you would recognize the "45 minute intruder." So, yeah, I know that 45 minutes is not long enough for him to take a good nap, but I don't know what to do about it. We let him cry, we try to rock him back to sleep, but nothing work. I'm frustrated, but everybody always tells us we shouldn't complain because he sleeps so good at night.
As Asher got older he continued with his 45 minute naps, we had no solution for our problem. He consistently fell asleep by himself and slept through the night (now from 8:30 pm to 7 am without waking up to eat), but he would never sleep for more than 45 minutes. By the way, when I say 45 minutes I mean exactly 45 minutes. I could look at the clock and know exactly when he would wake up.
I guess I learned to live with the short naps, after all he slept so good at night, but a few weeks ago his sleep pattern changed again. He started taking 30 minute naps. So, we tried letting him cry when he would wake up, we tried rocking him back to sleep, we tired holding him through the whole nap. It didn't matter he would only sleep 30 minutes. This left him tired all day long and wanting to take little naps every hour or two. I tried keeping him up longer and putting him down sooner, nothing changed. This started messing with his night time sleep. For the first time since he was a tiny newborn he started crying at night and waking up at 5 am and he has stopped falling asleep on his own.
So, Roger and I have decided it's time to buckle down and do something about Asher's sleep problems. We have been researching and reading and praying about what to do. Sunday night Sleep Week begins. For one week we are going to train Asher to sleep good, to fall asleep on his own (without a swaddle blanket) and to hopefully take good naps.
If you have any suggestions, ideas, or encouragement please let me know. My baby won't sleep and I need help!
Look who's sitting up tall, eating all kinds of fruits and vegetables, talking all the time, not interested in crawling and getting cuter everyday.
