Sunday night was Brian's first night shift of the seven he has to work over the next nine days.  After he left for work, Nathan was in the bouncer and I was cooking when I heard on the radio that there was a tornado warning for our county!  It had started to storm earlier, but I hadn't paid much attention.  Wasting no time, I grabbed Nathan, the computer, and the Boppy (for some reason), called for the cats and headed downstairs.  Well, it was somewhat of a false alarm, because once I got on weather.com, I realized that the tornado was east of us, heading northeast.  But since I had Nathan and the Boppy, I decided to see if he could sit by himself with it.  And success!

Tuesday was a busy day! After Nathan’s second nap, we went out shopping for clothes for Nathan and visited a nursery to look for plants (it was sad - all run down and over grown, the man and woman working there must have been in their eighties and just couldn't keep the whole place up anymore).  I also went out on my own - Brian had given me a gift card for a massage almost a year and a half ago, and I finally used it.  It was wonderful, so relaxing!!  Then Gran, Nathan and I went out again to run some more errands before heading back home for the night.


Wednesday started wonderfully - Nathan woke up around 7 and I brought him into bed with me while I tried to wake up, but then Gran came up and took him and I got another whole hour of sleep! It was fantastic! Wednesday was supposed to have the nicest weather of the whole week, so we decided to go visit Tanglewood park after Nathan's morning nap.  Our first stop was at the gardens and arboretium.  I put Nathan in the carrier and off we were to explore the gardens and the trails. 

With Brian having a week off of work, we didn't want the whole time go by without taking some kind of trip as a family. The weather had been getting warmer and more beautiful as the week went on, so on Friday we headed northwest to the mountains. The plan was to visit Linville Falls, Linville Gorge and Boone. As we got closer to the mountains, Brian and I noticed that the trees looked weird. After much discussion, we decided that there was probably a bad storm that had come through and broken lots of the trees. We were just a few miles away from the falls when our suspicions were confirmed. We were greeted by the following sight as we turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Brian, being the adventuresome driver he is, didn't want to let a little bit of debris in the road stop us. So we plowed ahead, until this sight greeted us around the next bend...
By the time we made it another half a mile up the trail to the next overlook, Nathan decided to take a nap. That's another great thing about this carrier - Nathan will fall asleep and take pretty good naps while we're on the go.

The Good: Nathan is taking much longer and better naps, he is waking less at night, and he is generally easier to put to sleep.

The Bad: Nathan is still waking up 2-3 times per night.

The Ugly: I'm still pretty frustrated with the night wakings, although I know in my head that it is SOOOO much better then before.

So we've been actively working to address Nathan's sleeping troubles for almost two weeks now, and as I mention above, we have made great strides.  While we used to have to rock Nathan until he fell asleep, the oh so gently place him in his crib so that he wouldn't wake up... now he will (almost always) go to sleep in his crib with patting and "shhhh-ing" from us, with the process usually taking less then 10 minutes.  He has gone from taking short naps and/or waking in the middle of the nap and having to be rocked back to sleep, to 3 pretty consistent naps (morning and noonish naps that are 1 hour 20 minutes, and an afternoon nap that is 40 minutes).  And at night he is usually waking between 2:00-2:30 (usually going back to sleep quickly after comforting from me) and again between 4:00-5:00 to eat, much better then every 1-2 hours the whole night. 

So why am not thrilled and thankful for all the progress we've made?  Because I can't get it out of my mind that almost two months ago he was waking up only once during the night to eat or some nights not waking at all!  I feel that developmentally and also from a hunger standpoint, he should now be even better equipped to make it all night long without waking up.  I guess I'm hoping that by writing this post and by putting my feelings into words that it will help me somehow...  I guess it keeps going back to the whole expectations thing.  Keep praying for us!

Here is the quote from "The Shack" that I mentioned in an earlier post:

The pediatrician also said that he acted more like a 6 month old than a 4 month old, which I had suspected. Our little boy is so mature!! He also got two shots and was SO MAD, but he calmed down pretty quickly after I got him dressed and was able to hold and comfort him. Then he took a LONG nap, which allowed me to clean up a little before David and Carroll arrived, as well as spend time updating the blog.

So Nathan's sleeping problems aren't solved, but we experienced a major breakthrough last night.  But let me start from Wednesday night and record a play-by-play account...
 
We put Nathan to bed around 8:00 Wednesday night, going to bed ourselves around 9:30 because Brian and I were both exhausted.  Nathan woke up at 11:00 and was up and down for 2 hours before I decided to feed him and realized that he really was hungry! After that, he slept until 4:30, when he woke up again hungry.  And when he woke up in the morning around 7:30, he was hungry again!  So that made me realize that he is either going through a growth spurt and needs more to eat, or I'm just not feeding him enough before bed. 

We're also moving on to step 2 of the plan to get him to sleep better (by himself) in his crib.  I wasn't sure what step 2 was until yesterday, when I checked yet another baby sleep book out of the library.  This book suggested having a bedtime and nap ritual, then putting the baby down in the crib whether or not he was super drowsy.  If he starts crying, try to comfort him in the crib, but if that doesn't work, pick him up and comfort him just until he calms down, then put him back down in the crib (called pick up/put down method).  The point is to make sure the baby doesn't get so worked up and upset that they can't put themselves to sleep, but also not hold them long enough for them to fall asleep in your arms.  So, armed with this new technique and the realization about Nathan being hungry at night...

Thursday I made sure that he had lots of good feedings, and in the evening I fed him at 6 and 8 then dreamfed him at 10 before I went to bed (fed him without waking him up).  I put him to bed after the 8:00 feeding with the pick up/put down method, which worked fairly well (maybe took 15 minutes to get him down).  He woke briefly at 9ish, but I was able to pat him back to sleep in his crib easily.  Then, he woke up at 2:15, and I tried to "shhh" him in his crib, then I tried pick up/put down, but he was really starting to cry loudly and I was worried about keeping Brian up.  So rocked Nathan for a while, but he was wide awake.  Then I tried feeding him, just in case he was still hungry (he wasn't really hungry), so I took him back into his room and put him back in his crib.  This time he didn't cry or fuss, he just kicked his legs happily and smiled at me.  At 3:00 in the morning, I didn't feel like smiling back.  Then he made a present for me in his diaper, so we changed that, ensuring that Nathan was WIDE awake.  Since Nathan had seemed somewhat content in his crib, I put him back in there, patted him a little, then lay down on the floor (using a stuffed soccer ball as a pillow and a baby blanket over me) and just waited to see what would happen.  Nathan started talking to himself, then he fussed for a minute, but after about 5 minutes, it was quiet.  I stayed on the floor for another probably 5 minutes - not a peep!  I crept back into my room and went back to bed, but couldn't go to sleep because I couldn't believe what just happened - Nathan put himself back to sleep, alone in his crib!!  Or maybe he was dead (at 3:00 in the morning, my imagination runs away with me sometimes!).  So after a while, just to reassure myself, I crept back into his room and yes, he was sleeping so peacefully in his crib.  I was THRILLED!  He woke up again this morning around 6:10 and I fed him (he was only kind of hungry) and he went straight back to sleep in his crib around 6:30 and then got up at 7:30. 

So, another huge win for him to be able to put himself back to sleep without needing to be rocked or patted or even know that someone is there!  While I'm realistic that this won't happen all the time just yet, it does make me encouraged that we are doing something right with this sleep training!  Plus, I know that we're going to have to stop swaddling sometime soon, and who knows how that will impact his sleep.  So keep the prayers coming and there is definitely a light at the end of this long, tiring tunnel!