Sleep much????

I remember a conversation I had the first week in November with another new mom at my church. Her son is two weeks older than Davey.

She asked me if Davey was awake much during the day. I remember just after I answered her thinking, "Oh no! Now I've jinxed it. He's never going to sleep anymore." But before my head could stop my mouth, my mouth had said, "oh no. All Davey ever does is sleep. In fact, I have a hard time waking him up for feedings. I'm looking forward to the day he starts being awake more so I can see more of his personality." FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

Sometime around Christmas he started sleeping for about six hours straight. I said it was my Christmas present. Because you see, Davey doesn't nap much. Lately I've gotten him into a routine. He'll use his mid-morning feed as nap time (like I said an earlier post, he's efficient). He'll have a nap in the afternoon (if I drive him to sleep). But since he got sick two weeks ago, he WILL NOT go to sleep at night. Oh, he's tired all right. He'll fall asleep eating. He'll fall asleep in the car. He'll fall asleep in daddy's arms while daddy bounces him. But the second you try to put him down in his crib, he's WIDE awake.

Out of desperation (and partly because we've both been sick and exhausted) I've been letting him sleep on me. Sitting up on the couch, with him lying across my chest. You don't sleep too well like that. In fact, we're getting so crabby, we've been thinking of getting marriage counselling.

So this afternoon, Andrew wrote out a new schedule for Davey and inserted where we'd like him to fall asleep. And though we've always been adverse to it, we're going to try the "let him cry in his crib if you have to, but don't pick him up" mode of getting him to sleep. Andrew's going to let me go to the grocery store so I don't have to be here to hear it. We start tonight.

And so far today, everything has gone to schedule. The eating, the napping...and at 6 pm we went out for a walk. With Davey in the back pack so he wouldn't fall asleep - in fact, I was thinking the stimulation might wear him out so he'll go to bed easier at 9 (the time we decided wasn't overly ambitious for getting him to bed.) As you can see, the walking plan worked real well. We'll let you know how the rest of the night goes....