Hi all, I've hit a new problem and really need some help or just confirmation that what I'm planning on doing is the right thing. I'll have to set the story....
14 month old boy, still on omeprazole for reflux and still cannot tolerate cow's milk. Very sensitive tummy, we often have tummy aches followed by crying and then farting. He's a touchy baby, I think mainly down to all his digestive issues! Once we hit the right level of omeprazole and got him fully onto a bottle so there was no hidden dairy slipping into my breastmilk, he's been a great sleeper and napper from about 8.5 months old. He would go to sleep independently 90% of the time, and then I would usually only have to go into him if he lost his teddies in the cot, so run in, find the teddies and then he would resettle himself. I would say maybe 1 night per week, he was having a proper wake-up with crying. I would give him a quick cuddle, still in his bedroom, and then lay him back down and settle him in the cot.
I went back to work part-time 3 days a week at the beginning of October, and he is now with a childminder 3 days a week. We've basically had illness ever since the second week of October. Cough and cold, ear infection, ear infection, chest infection.... and then 1 month ago he ended up in hospital and had to undergo quite a serious operation to remove some infected bone behind the ear (next to the skull). We had an awful hospital experience, and basically were kept nil by mouth for far too long because of delays from the hospital (14 hours of nil by mouth before he was sedated for a CT scan!). I was pacing the corridors of the ward, carrying DS whilst he was pretty much constantly crying. He would cry when my husband took over to give me a break, and would only go to sleep if I was cuddling him constantly.
So this was almost 1 month ago, and since we came out of hospital, he then had a digestive reaction to the antibiotics with sickness and diarrhoea for a week. Once he got past that, he was happy as larry for 3 or 4 days, and started to sleep fairly well again in his cot at night after helped him get back on track. A few times he would wake and need a lot of cuddling to get back to sleep, but then would go back into his cot evertually. He's now been back at the childminders for 2 weeks, and straight away picked up another cough and has been really ill again. On top of that, we had his (very delayed) 12 month vaccines yesterday.
My problem then.... he won't stay in his cot at night! He's napping for 1.5-2 hours in the day like always, and he will settle in his cot from being totally awake at bedtime, with only a minute or two of protesting. He will sleep until 9/10/11pm and then once he wakes crying, it's impossible to get him back to sleep in his cot, so I've been co-sleeping with him for the last 2 weeks from the point that he first wakes in the night.
I'm thinking that I just need to bite the bullet and be firm with him to get him back on track. My plan is that from Friday (so OH can help out if I'm tired in the day), under no circumstances to pick him up and out of the cot. When he cries, go into him and sit by the side of his cot reassuring him, with my hand through the bars if he needs it. Get him to lie down and go to sleep. Does this sound like the right plan??? I know he can do it, and I've used this method to get him back on track before, but we've had such an awful 2 months that I've been too weak and tired at night to go through with it. I think I just need to write this to commit myself to this weekend, and I'll come back with updates on how it's going for accountability!
