I feel like I’ve been handling the lack of regular sleep pretty darn well since Zeke came along. Granted, I haven’t had the best attention span and I have snapped at my dear Dave a number of times unnecessarily, but on the whole, I’ve felt pretty okay. However, Zeke has developed a new habit over the past few nights that is seriously testing my ability to function.
It’s always been a little tricky to get Z to sleep at night, but once he was out he would sleep pretty well for most of the night. He would wake up every few hours and we’d change his diaper and feed him, but after that he would pretty much go right back to sleep. But for the past three nights, Z’s had other ideas.
First, he wakes up more often in the night – after four hours the first time and then every two hours after that. (It used to be after 5-6 hours and every three hours after that.) When he wakes up, he’s super fussy, but while before I could feed him and he would eat really well and calm right down, now he fusses and fights and barely eats and kind of hurts me in the process. After the little he does eat, I try to put him down the way I used to, but now he either immediately starts writhing around and fussing, or he’s quiet for about 10 minutes and then he starts complaining (grunting and whining and acting just generally miserable).
If we pick him up and hold him or bounce him, he’ll fall back to sleep. But as soon as we put him down he wakes up again. We must have done this 7 or 8 times last night between 11:45pm and 1:30am before I finally just held him until he went into a deep sleep (which every sleep expert will tell you not to do). Then we did it again between 3:45 and 5am, when I actually fell asleep sitting up in bed with him in my arms.
I am at a complete loss for how to handle this, and the thought of having to deal with this night after night makes me want to jump out a window – with a certain small person in tow. My (slight) hope is that because he’s not eating very much when he wakes up, maybe he doesn’t need to eat and he’s just waking up out of habit and this is a step (albeit a frustrating one) towards him sleeping through the night. My fear is that our bouncing him to sleep the first time and letting him sleep so much in the stroller/carrier/swing has finally convinced him that being held and/or in motion is the only way to sleep.
Either way, I feel tired like I have never felt before, and something better change soon or I am truly going to lose my mind.
Boy, do I hear you. We have had our times, too. When it’s like this you feel like you truly might lose your mind. I wish I had some magical words that would help Zeke sleep better, but I am sure you guys are trying everything you can already, so what I think I’ll offer is this: IT WILL END. One way or the other, it will. He will move out of whatever phase he’s in now, and sleep better again. You have my word. So hold on and keep repeating that to yourself when you start to doubt it.