Noah has been going through yet another crazy sleep pattern, and I am utterly exhausted. I’ve blogged many times about not getting enough sleep, from the time he was three months old, to a month after that, followed by when he turned six months old and fell asleep while eating, and finally, when I THOUGHT he was able to fall asleep on his own. Hah. Here’s the latest development in this seemingly never-ending sleep saga.
Noah came down with a runny/blocked nose during our Bali trip, and I think that’s where all our recent sleeping problems started. We weren’t quite comfortable with him in the cot provided by the hotel, so we decided to let him co-sleep with us. His blocked nose made him really uncomfortable, and the only way he could fall asleep then was by sitting next to me and propping his head up on my chest or tummy. Good for baby, bad for mummy. I would try to re-position him after he has fallen asleep, but that sometimes didn’t work, and I would have to get him to sleep all over again.
When we got back from our holiday, we thought we could just go back to our old routine of nursing him to sleep, and then putting him into his cot. Noah doesn’t usually sleep through the night, but I had accepted that, thinking that I could deal with waking up once at 4am to nurse him back to sleep, and again at maybe 6am to do the same. He would wake up at about 8am, but that was a decent time, especially if he slept at 1030pm the night before. To my great dismay, the old routine became non-existent, and in its place was a horrible new routine, designed to torture me (and even C at times).
I would put him into his pyjama pants, (which has become quite a challenge, because he will now crawl away from me) and we would read two bedtime stories and say a short prayer together. Then, he will kiss C goodnight, before I carry him over to the switches, so that he can switch off the light. Previously, I would just nurse him to sleep after that, but now, he just refuses to sleep, even after I’ve nursed him numerous times within an hour (or two, on bad nights). He would struggle to sit up after having his milk, then roll around on the bed, plopping his head on random parts of my body without any warning. I’m amazed that I don’t have bruises on my cheeks! Sometimes, his head makes contact with my hip bone, and he would wail from the pain, which meant a round of comforting him, before he resumed his random going-to-bed routine. I massage his face and pat his chest when he’s lying on me, and sometimes, this helps him to fall asleep. After I think he’s in deep sleep, I put him in his cot, and pray really hard that he will sleep in there.
At about 1 or 2am, the little boy will wake up, roll over, sit up, and pull himself up to stand in his cot. He’d whine until I pick him up and nurse him, but this time round, he would refuse to go back to his cot, no matter how long I wait after he has fallen asleep. Most nights, I give in and let him sleep on me, if he refuses to even sleep on our bed. This means I end up sleeping while seated upright, with a baby sprawled across me, and my right arm tucked around him for safety. He would wake up a couple more times during the night, and I’d have to nurse him and let him settle down on his own again. You have no idea how tiring it is.
On Thursday, he refused to go back to sleep after he woke up at 4am. I gave up trying to get him to go back to sleep at about 6am, and fell asleep. I have no idea what he did after that, but I think he fell asleep too, because he started bouncing up and down on our bed at about 8am. Thankfully, C took pity on me and brought Noah down to get breakfast, while I slept for half an hour more. At least Noah takes a longer nap these days, between 11am to 1pm, and sometimes deigns to take another nap in the afternoon or evening, for which, I’m very thankful.
I have no idea how long this madness will go on for, and I’m guessing that our upcoming trips won’t help either. We’re off to our first family church camp this Sunday, and will also be tagging along on C’s work trip to Hong Kong at the end of the month. I pray that Noah will adjust well and settle into a more decent sleep pattern, so that we can all get sufficient rest.
The little boy napping awkwardly on our bed
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