Hi friends,
I've had so so so much trouble with sleep, mine, his. He's 21mos. I've been doing the set nap and BT consistently for more than a month and there never is any consistency. It's IMMENSELY frustrating. There's always SOMETHING!
Yesterday, for some reason he woke up from nap after 1.5 (too short). The night before was a good night, I did everything right, he just coughed and couldn't go back to sleep. I was devastated. Literally. I'm trying to lighten up... not very successfully. And all that worry was for nothing, b/c I put him to bed 30m early, and boom, he slept 11.5 hrs last night!! So I did something right for once-- the +/- 30m at BT worked!
Today I thought it would be smooth sailing nap, but he woke up positively screaming after about 30m... I suppose because he was hot. It's a hot day, and I covered him up with 3
blankets out of habit-- my bad. His skin was burning. He resettled and now I'm in a conundrum b/c I was going to wake him up at the 2hr mark (to prevent a UT night) but he was awake for about 15? min and just... what now. I can do the math, but an interrupted nap does not obey math rules. I mean, even if he gets the planned amount of sleep and I put him to bed at what was going to be the right BT, all that may have changed b/c the nap was interrupted.
(I will certainly check his temp when he wakes, or I wake him, whatever I decide to do)
There's never any normal, this is every day, ya'll. It's driving me insane. I need to let go, somehow.
Is there humor in this somewhere? Maybe this. Last night I realized there are several levels of SLEEP SUCKINESS:
1. Slightly sucky: Once in a while, maybe every few days, or every week, something goes wrong. An OT EW, a short nap, whatever, but they recover in a day or two. You don't miss much sleep at all. The schedule saves the day.
2. Moderately sucky: Everybody is getting the sleep they need more than half of the time, even if the LO isn't following the 'schedule' dependably.
3. Positively sucky: You and the baby are not getting enough sleep most of the time, lots of NW, consistent (daily!) EW before 6am.
So, the good stuff is: I'm on level 2. It used to be level 3. It's better than it was, and I've learned so much since then. And I can nap if I must, when most people can't, they have to work all day. And he's cute.
Amanda
