Momma & Miles Monday/A Sleepy Tuesday Tale

This post is coming slightly late because someone was not into going to bed all night.  I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.  He was a crabby patty, pretty much from the moment we got home from daycare.  You see, finally, after 14 months, Miles is teething.

I would consider myself to have been lucky with Miles' sleep patterns up until this point.  He is not a great sleeper, though he's also not a bad sleeper.  From the beginning, he was generally easy to get down and only woke up once or twice a night, so I was always able to get good stretches of sleep, but he also didn't sleep through the night consistently until about a month or so ago.  So...middle of the road I'd say.  Of course, I'd choose middle of the road over bad sleeper any day.  I've heard the woes of my mom friends with terrible sleepers and I do not envy them in the least.  Because we've had relatively good luck with sleep, those nights that are not as good are so. much. harder.  Last night was one of those nights.

We decided to start some light sleep training when Miles turned one.  We implemented a regular bed time (9:30 - still too late in my opinion...we're working on it, but we don't eat dinner until 7:30 so an earlier bed time is really hard) and started putting him to bed awake.  For the first few days, this meant we had to let him cry a little.  I was very adamant about a 5 minute time limit on crying.  I won't ever do the "Cry It Out" method, it's just not my style.  The first night went amazing.  He fell asleep on his own after 3 minutes (this was a major - and welcome - change from rubbing his back for 45 minutes and sneaking out of the room, only to have him wake up when his door creaked slightly and having to repeat the process).  He also stayed asleep for the whole night.  We repeated the process the next day, he cried for about a minute and then stayed asleep.  This continued for a week, we had a couple days of regression, but got back into the routine and it's been working pretty well for us for the last two months - most nights he doesn't cry at all.  I lay him down, he goes to sleep, he stays asleep.  It had even gotten to the point where if he would wake up in the middle of the night, he could put himself back to sleep (unless he was in desperate need of a new diaper).  It has been great.  But again, now that I've gotten used to the routine, any deviation is rough.

So as I said, he was pretty cranky yesterday.  He was also "playing" by just laying on the couch, chillaxin'.  He was giving all his "ready for bed" cues by about 8:30.  I figured it would be another easy bedtime, and perhaps even an early one.  I even told Chad I was going to take a shower after he went to sleep (score!)  Wrong.  I put his PJs on him and all of a sudden he's awake.  So we wait til 9:30.  He's still awake, but it's bedtime, so up he goes.  He was not having it.  I had to stand there and try to rub his back for about 30 minutes, but most of the time he was actually walking around his crib trying to play.  I decided to try and leave the room and see if he would just go to sleep on his own.  As soon as I walked out, there was some very pissed off screaming going on.  5 minutes  I walked back in and started the process again.  I finally got him to sleep after another 10 minutes or so.  But as soon as I closed the door (as silently as I could), awake.  I decided to wait it out for a minute - the kid was clearly overtired and wanted to sleep.  But Chad thought I had gotten into the shower already so he came up to comfort Miles after only about 30 seconds.  Miles wouldn't calm down, so Chad left me to it again.  Miles could not be comforted so I gave in and pulled out the Motrin.

I know he's teething, I know he's probably in pain and this will help him, but I always second guess myself when I go to the meds to help.  My biggest problem is that while he was cranky, he didn't act like he was in pain prior to bedtime.  It was only when I put him in the crib that the real problems started, so is Motrin really necessary?  I don't know.  But whether it was the Motrin or pure exhaustion, he finally went to sleep about 20 minutes later.  And he stayed asleep the rest of the night.  He woke up once around 6 am, but he put himself right back to sleep.

It had taken over an hour.  A routine that usually takes 2 minutes took 75.  But I know I'm still lucky - it certainly could have been much worse.  It was now quarter to 11 but of course, I had promised myself a shower at that point - I was getting one.  I'm also one of those people who values sleep much more in the morning than at night, so if I get the choice to do something before bed or when I wake up, I'm always choosing before bed.  I hit the snooze button for 45 minutes after my initial alarm goes off and I don't get out of bed until 15 minutes before I have to leave for work.  And I was stressed and sore from leaning over the crib giving back rubs, so I stayed in the shower for as long as I could.  It was wonderful.  But that meant that I didn't go to sleep until midnight.  And then of course, the dog had to get up and go out in the middle of the night and she refuses to let Chad take her, so I was up at 1:30 doing that, trying not to fall asleep standing up.  And then, to top it all off, in the middle of my snooze cycle, at least 20 minutes before I was mentally prepared to get up, the alarm on his monitor started to go off.  So I shot out of bed - only for it to be a false alarm (though I welcome false alarms over real ones any day...).

this about sums it up...

just laying on the couch...playing with my easter eggs.  nbd.

yep...that's about how i feel today too, bud.

here's hoping today (tonight) is a little better.

stay chelish, friends.