The perils of 9 months...

Will has been such a handful ever since he hit 9 months! He loves to crawl, which is great...BUT, it means I have to chase him and say "no" a million times a day! The condo we live in has an open floor plan so there's no way to fence him in. SO, we've had to rearrange furniture...we're using his toy chest, the ottoman to our chair and a few toys (ones that he can't move) to kind of block him in. Ha! I call it his jail when I'm home with him!

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging today is that we are FINALLY getting sleep and I feel like my brain works again :) For the past couple months, he's been getting up at night and it was tolerable b/c I could pick him up and rock him for 5 or 10 minutes then put him right back down. Well, it got worse and worse. It went from waking up twice a week to every night, then more than one a night, then to longer times at night. We ended up giving him bottles to ease him and put him back to bed. Then, that stopped working! For the past two weeks, we have had to be up with him for a couple hours at a time! Talk about tired mommy and daddy!! I ended up bringing him to our bed and sleeping with him on my chest a couple times b/c he would SCREAM as soon as I laid him down. We knew that one solution was to let him cry, so we did that one night and he ended up getting so worked up that he threw up everywhere....all in his crib and all over the carpet (I picked him up out of his crib and sat him on the floor to undress him). I think that was this past Sunday night. Monday night we were so scared to let him cry that we didn't! We ended up being up with him for a few hours that night...

So, finally at our wits end, we took him to the doc Tuesday morning to make sure he wasn't sick. I swear, the second the doc walked in the room, I erupted in tears! I just couldn't help it! I felt like I was finally going to get answers. I just LOVE our doc. She has a 22 month old daughter so I feel like she is really talking from experience. She did not disappoint....she checked him out, no ear infection, no fever, checked his throat, listened to his chest, etc. Nothing physically wrong. She said that sleep regression was totally normal for his age, and that we had to push through and let him cry. Obviously, being a doc, she gave us several options, but said that crying it out would work the fastest. She said that he probably got used to us coming in and picking him up and thought that every time he "woke up" he needed to be held by us. I put woke up in parentheses b/c babies go through sleep cycles during the night where they partially wake then go back into a deep sleep. She said that the best thing to do is just let him cry, even if it takes an hour (Oh Lord....). Also, she said that putting him to bed earlier would help. We were putting him down about 8:30, so we rearranged his night time routine in order to get him in bed by 7:30. Well, I immediately started our new plan of letting him cry when I got home. I put him down for his nap, and he cried, and cried, and cried. Normally he doesn't cry at all when I put him down for naps, but I think his night time sleep was so messed up that it started to effect his naps. He ended up crying for 15 min then went to sleep. Same story for his afternoon nap...grrrr! Both naps were only about 45 min. A normal nap is about an hour to an hour and a half. Tuesday night comes, and Cory and I are just DREADING what's to come... We put him down at 7:30 on the dot and he cried until 8:00...a whole 30 minutes! At least it wasn't an hour, right?!?!

The big question is.....Did he wake up during the night??? Yes...but only once and for just a minute then fell asleep! I couldn't believe it! Did it really work that fast, or was he just extra tired b/c he didn't get good naps? Wednesday naps - he went down about 9:30am with just a minute of crying and slept for 2 hours! I put him down around 3 for his afternoon nap and he cried for 10 minutes and went to sleep. I woke him up at 4 b/c I figured we'd have a hard time at bedtime if he slept longer than that. That night - again, we put him down at 7:30 but he only cried for 9 minutes. He didn't wake up AT ALL last night! I can hear angels singing...thank goodness!! I think our problem is solved!

The doc said that when we travel, be prepared for him to wake up there and for a couple days once we return. Makes me not want to travel! Until now, we've been doing lots of traveling! At least one trip a month, some months 2. It gets harder the older he gets...he doesn't sleep well in pack in plays and our families don't really have an ideal place for him to sleep.

ok...now that I feel sane again, I'm planning to take pictures of some recent paper stuff I've done and post them tomorrow!! Stay tuned!

Britt