After many lost battles trying to get Alston to sleep through the night I have finally won a battle and know the war will be over soon. For the longest time it seemed like Alston was never going to sleep through the night, he was waking up twice a night to eat and I thought I’d never sleep a full night again! After his 6 months check up, the doctor told me that Alston was getting close to the age/weight when he sees most babies begin sleeping through the night. So, with high hopes I tried to start getting Alston on a new routine. I had my mom and Patrick’s mom keep a schedule of everything Alston did while they kept him. After about two weeks, I began to notice a pattern and planned out a schedule for him. This is what it looked like:
6:30… wake-up
7:30… breakfast
9:00… bottle & 1 hour nap
12:00… lunch
2:00… bottle & 2-3 hour nap
5:00… dinner
7:00… snack
7:30… bath
8:00… bedtime

This seemed to have a positive effect, but he was still waking up to eat during the night, and then he would wake up because he was soaking wet… So, I started trying to feed him less and less in the middle of the night and eventually quit offering him anything. I also started laying him down and letting him go to sleep on his own. This was the hardest part, because he just cried and cried. When rocking didn’t help, I decided to boycott the rocking chair. I was fed up. He cried when you held him, he cried when you rocked him, he cried no matter what. So, I decided to let him cry in his own bed in his own room. This is when the battle with his daddy started. Since Patrick isn’t home during the week he has a tendency to spoil Alston whenever he is home. So, I decided to let him put up with the grouchy sleepy baby all weekend and I boycotted anything having to do with helping Alston get to sleep. I won that battle, after a a whole weekend of a really grumpy unhappy baby, Patrick joined my team and decided that I was right. I knew that if Alston could go to sleep on his own, then when he woke up in the middle of the night he could fall back asleep without help. Patrick decided that using the pacifier to go to sleep wasn’t good either, because he would wake up when it fell out. So, Tuesday night I put Alston in his bed and he cried for about 15 minutes before he fell asleep. Then he woke up at 12:30 and I {gave in} and patted his back for a second and he was back out. Then he woke up at 2:00 and cried for about 45 minutes on and off- but I held strong– and he eventually fell back asleep. I told my mom not to rock him to sleep and she had very little luck getting him to nap yesterday. He was exhausted when we got home and I laid him in his bed at about 8:45. He only cried for less than 10 minutes and slept until 3:00… he whimpered and fell right back to sleep. PRAISE THE LORD! He basically slept through the whole night. I, on the other hand, did not. I would wake up every couple of hours and realize that he hadn’t woken up and have to go check on him. He was just fine and made it through 2 nights in his own bed in his own room, downstairs. I’ve felt weird letting him sleep downstairs when I’m home without Patrick and I don’t like to sleep with my bedroom door open. But I know Alston is getting used to being out of his comfort zone, so I can et used to it, too. I know the war isn’t over… but I can see the end in sight! I don’t have any sleep related pictures for this post, but here are some of him enjoying his first Nilla Wafer last night. He likes them, can you tell?