The Sleep Situation as of Now

Finally, after 7 months of sleeping in a pack n play in our room, Jude has graduated to sleeping in his own crib in his own room. Upstairs. I have talked about and planned to move him to his room for literally months. But then he started waking up at night again, and I wasn't too keen on the idea of having to walk all the way upstairs every time he needed his pacifier reinserted. Plus, I was worried that it would wake Aubrey up when he cried in the middle of the night, and I felt like two crying children not sleeping through the night would send me over the edge. Haha. So, Jude has remained in our room all these months. I kept telling myself that when he slept through the night again, we would move him.

I had started putting him in his crib for naps, and he seemed to be napping better that he ever did in his pack n play. This made sense to me, because I'm pretty sure his bed is probably way more comfortable than the pack n play. Finally, I realized that Jude might not sleep though the night again for a long time, and it might even help for him to be in his own bed away from us. It sure couldn't hurt, and if it did, we could just put him right back in his pack n play ;-) So Jude slept in his bed for the first time 3 nights ago.

Aubrey sleeps with 2 fans going in her room, and that completely drowns out any noise that Jude makes. Jude has a noise maker in his room, and we turned the volume up pretty loud, and that prevents him from hearing any noise that Aubrey might make. So, they don't wake each other up at all. Whew! That was one thing I could check off my list of worries. Haha!

The first night Jude was in his bed, things didn't go so well. He went to sleep easily. We really don't have any trouble with him going to sleep ever since we briefly did the Ferber method a couple of months ago. He usually doesn't cry at all when we put him down at night, and, if he does, it's VERY briefly. He slept in his bed without a peep until about 1 AM. Things got a little rough at that point. We tried to comfort him, but he just wouldn't go back to sleep. We ended up letting him cry for a while, and he did settle and go back to sleep. For about 10 minutes :( He was then up crying again, so he ended up in the bed with us, and that's where he stayed the rest of the night. I never fed him, though, so that was a plus. He's really not hungry when he wakes up. I usually end up feeding him to try to get him to sleep, but it never works, and then we're right back at square one with him crying and not sleeping. So, I was really going to try not to feed him unless I felt like he was actually hungry.

The next night was a little better. When Jude woke up at about 1 AM again, I went upstairs and rocked him back to sleep. Unfortunately, he woke up crying as soon as I laid him back down. When I got back into our room and turned the monitor up, David heard him crying and didn't realize that I had just rocked him, so he jumped up and went and rocked him again. Haha! He had the same results that I did :( David and I were laying in bed talking about how we didn't know what to do and saying that we were so tired and just wanted to sleep. Even though we didn't want to, we decided that we would bring him into our bed again and make a better plan that we could stick to when we weren't so tired and recovering from being sick. We had just decided that when Jude quit crying. I told David not to get his hopes up. He would be crying again in 5 minutes. The next thing I knew, I looked at the clock and it was 6:15! I was SO happy but also a little worried about Jude. I went to check on him, and he woke up. I fed him at that point and put him in the bed with me for an hour until Aubrey woke up.

Last night was even better! Jude cried out once, but he soothed himself and went back to sleep before one of us could even get to his room. He slept until 5:45, which is great for me! I think the problem was, in our room, I rushed to give him his pacifier as soon as he started to stir. I didn't really even give him a chance to self-soothe, because I wanted to comfort him before he got worked up. He seems to do SO much better if we just give him a chance to work it out on his own. I think sometimes he's just stirring and getting comfortable and he cries out, but he isn't necessarily upset or even really awake. When we go into his room, it just causes him to wake up fully, and that's when he gets upset. That's definitely not to say that we'll never have another rough night, or that we won't go into his room at all anymore. I'm just saying that we'll be sure to give him a minute to soothe himself before we intervene.

It SURE has been nice to get some good sleep the past couple of nights. I'm so so thankful! I feel like it's been good for him, too, because he seems to nap better when he sleeps well at night. I'm just hoping we've turned a sleep corner! I know this post is long and way more detailed than most people probably care about, but sleep has been such a huge struggle with Jude that I want to document the journey :-) Getting good sleep is a total answer to prayer, and I'm very relieved.