For the last six or seven weeks, Alex has been sleeping great at night. He usually goes to bed in his crib around 6pm and sleeps until about 6am, waking up to eat at 10pm and 2am. After his feedings, he goes right back to sleep. Rarely does he wake up between feedings. We've established a bedtime routine and we usually play white noise in his room at night. He's also been sleeping swaddled since he was born.
Well, over the last week things have really changed. The first thing to go was bedtime. It used to be that he'd get tired while we were reading a book and singing a song, and we could put him down in the crib almost asleep and he would drop off by himself. Now he seems to be fighting sleep a lot harder. Bedtime is taking a lot longer, and even after we get him down he often wakes up again twenty or thirty minutes later and we have to go back up and rock him again. I know all the books say not to rock them to sleep and then lay them down, but if we put him down awake now he just starts crying. The worst part is, you can see how tired he is, but he just can't let go and go to sleep.
After a few nights like this, the overnight sleep pattern started to disintegrate as well. He started waking up between feedings and fussing. I would wait a few minutes to make sure he was really awake and then go in to see about him. Usually I could calm him down in a few minutes and put him right back down. It wasn't great, for his sleep or mine, but it was better than not sleeping at all.
Last night things got even worse. He woke up at 12:30, only an hour and a half after he'd been down after the 10:30 feeding. He couldn't get back to sleep. We lay down together on the sofa for two hours -- he slept, I didn't -- until I fed him at 2:30 and put him back down in the crib. He slept from 3:00 to 5:00, then he woke up and started fretting. I went in and he slept in my arms on the sofa until 6:30, when we both got up. He had breakfast around 7:00 this morning and went down for a short nap in the crib at 7:45.
This kind of schedule is really tough. I don't feel like he's rested, and I know I'm not. I get worried about driving the car when I haven't had enough sleep at night. I'm just hoping things will settle back down soon.
I don't know why this is happening, but I've read in a lot of books that new developmental stages can disrupt sleep patterns. He's definitely learning a lot right now, at 13 weeks, and doing a lot of new things during the day. He's grabbing for things, interacting with people more, and moving his arms and legs a lot more. I suspect that has something to do with the lack of sleep. It may be a normal side effect of the great strides he's making. But it's still hard on the family.
I have to admit, though, there's something sweet about the way he calms down when I pick him up. I know that there will come a day when a hug from mommy won't make everything all better anymore, so I'm enjoying it now, while I can.
