Sleep madness

I know all things come and go in phases, the good and the bad. Sadly, our incredibly good phase of sleep seems to be at an end and we're entering a bad cycle. About a week ago, Ronan had a terrible time staying asleep. One night, (when Tom was working, of course), he woke up at 2 a.m. Not a huge deal, it's happened before. Normally I get up, change him, give him a bottle (bad I know, but it works), lay him back down and he's asleep once more. Well, that did get him to sleep, but he'd wake up about twenty minutes later. I'd go back in, rock him, sing to him, rub his back, let him cry, whatever. He'd go back to sleep, but be up again in twenty minutes. Repeat. Finally, around 4 a.m., I was exhausted and decided to try to bring him to bed with me. This usually doesn't go too well, because he sees my bed as a climbing toy; sure enough, we got in there, I laid him down, and he immediately tried to crawl over me and off the bed. I held him for a little bit and pretty soon he collapsed on my arm and fell asleep.

It took me much longer to fall asleep - this is a big reason why co-sleeping was never an option. I'm so paranoid about suffocation, crushing him, etc. that on the few occasions where I did bring him to bed with me (during those first couple weeks home, when he was nursing all the time and I was exhausted), I didn't really sleep. I'd drift off and then jerk myself awake in a panic, sure that I would place my hand on his little chest and not feel it move. So anyway, yeah, even though he's much bigger now, I still worry about stuff like that. But eventually, around 5, I fell asleep too. This was the cue for the dogs to realize that there hadn't been any noise or commotion lately. At 5:30, they came bounding into my room, barking to be let out. Ronan managed to sleep through that, so I thought I could very carefully slide my arm out from under him, run let the dogs out, then come back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours.

No such luck. The second I started moving, Ronan woke up in full terror. He started screaming these terrible, horror-movie type screams. I immediately picked him up and tried to comfort him, told him I wasn't leaving him, etc. Meanwhile, the dogs were really going nuts now, so I got up and we went to let them out, Ronan still screaming and crying. Got the dogs out and Ronan calmed down a bit, though he was still crying (at least now it was normal crying though). Got back to my room and tried to lay down with him and the terrified shrieking began again. I finally just set him on the floor and he stood there, silent and kind of swaying. I asked him if he wanted to go back to bed and he just shook his head no. I tried putting him in his crib, thinking maybe he just wanted to be back in his own room, but that didn't work either. So we were up for the day at 5:30 - and I am not a morning person.

That seems to have (mostly) passed. But now nap time has become a major struggle too. It used to be that I could just put him in his crib, maybe sing a song or get him a drink, and he'd be out like a light. No more. Eventually he'll fall asleep, but he gets upset when I try to leave the room before he's out. It's very weird. I just keep reminding myself that this too shall pass.

Other than that, things are going pretty well. We're down to one nap a day, although I'm not entirely sure he's ready for that. He starts to get pretty cranky around dinner time, but oh well. Tom has a work retreat/picnic thing on Wednesday that's all day, so tomorrow he's going to try to switch his sleep schedule. It'll be hard for him, but I'm kind of looking forward to having him up for at least part of the day. We'll see how it goes. Wish us luck!