Sleeptastic

After our failed attempt over MLK weekend to get the kids to share a room, we didn't know when we'd try again. But a few weeks ago the answer started to become painstakingly clear. Nichol all of a sudden went from sleeping soundly through the night to waking up every night between 11pm-1am, and then crying non-stop for two hours, unless he was held. This went on for two weeks. Finally, we couldn't take it anymore. Every night we would dread going to bed because we knew we were going to get a screaming wake-up call in the middle of the night.

And because he was sleeping in the next room, when we would try and let him cry it out, it was too loud. Finally we came to the conclusion that if he was sharing a room with Annie (her room is on the opposite side of the apt), worst case scenario we could just bring Annie in our room, and he could cry it out and we could do some serious sleep training.

It was also during this time that Nichol was proving to be a real stinker during naptime as well. Instead of going down and taking a morning and afternoon nap with little to no fuss, he was beginning to put up quite a stink. Something had to be done.

It is definitely true that time has a way of helping you gloss over certain things. When we were talking about how to deal with Nichol, we both started saying how we never had these problems with Annie and she was such a great sleeper. Wrong. Annie used to be a terrible sleeper and terrible napper. In fact, the more we thought about it, the more we saw the same pattern repeating itself. With Annie we fell into the trap of having her sleep in our bed, which only made the problem worse. By worse she would wake up earlier and earlier wanting to come sleep with us. With Nichol, we weren't bringing him into our bed (although we tried) because the only way he'd stop crying was if you were holding and rocking him.

So we bit the bullet and put Nichol to sleep in Annie's room... and it went pretty darn well. The first night Nichol woke up for his usual cry-time, we made sure he was alright, fetched Annie, and let him wail. I don't remember how long it was, but a few hours later he stopped and we put Annie back in her bed. Everyone was remarkably adaptable, and we managed to eke out more sleep that evening than we had been getting in quite some time. The next night was similar, only Nichol was crying a bit less... and it continued like this for the week, until finally one night Karen and I woke up and it was 4:30am! And no one was up! I hate to jinx this, but it has been two weeks that they've been sharing a room, and over the past week Nichol has not woken up in the middle of the night once! And now Nichol is going down much easier for his morning and afternoon naps too!

We can only hope this continues! This weekend we have a lot of family and friends coming into town for Nichol's baptism Sunday.