The Blog About The Team

Yesterday was another very challenging day. I am thankful that today was better.

We hit a point yesterday where we realized that we needed to come up with a clear strategy in how to deal with Aed’s sleeping habits. For most of Aed’s life I have been spending the majority of my days (and Ian too, when he’s home) trying to find ways to soothe my baby to sleep. Sometimes this takes hours at a time and he screams no matter what you do with him. Then when he wakes up, he is only happy for a very short time before he gets tired and fussy again. I have played all the mental games you can imagine and tried every strategy I can think of to help him get to sleep more peacefully to no avail. The only thing that is consistent is if we find something that works it only works twice max before we’re back to square one. It is incredibly discouraging and incredibly tiring to do this all day long for a baby who is napping (or attempting to do so) four times a day (plus bedtime!), not to mention the strain this has put on our social lives (and marriage) as it is hard to go anywhere or have anyone over when Aed is demanding our attention almost constantly.

Yes, he has been overcoming jet lag this week, but we believed that we were past that and he was just continuing to exhibit many of the difficult tendencies he’s been exhibiting for most of his short life with regard to sleeping. So we decided to consult a sleep book that we have to see what it says about how to deal with temperamental 4 month olds.

We are both so glad we did.

We found that the section on 3-4 month olds described what Aed is doing to a ‘T’ and decided to try to consistently implement some of the suggestions on how to deal with such behaviors.

My wonderful and supportive hubby stayed home with me all day today (although he was still working diligently!) to offer reassurance when the inevitable discouragement came along. I am happy to report that Aed went down for one of his naps today with no crying and he went down for bed tonight with no crying! We are hopeful (though we have certainly learned NOT to count our chickens before they hatch with this little fellow) that if we stick with it, our persistence in this area will pay off and we will end up with a baby that can sleep more easily and is much happier when he is awake!

So, today I am thankful for our sleep book. I am also thankful for my hubby because I pretty much have a break down every day when he’s not here and Aed is really struggling. I know it is harder for him to work from home, but I am thankful that he is willing to make such sacrifices for the sake of his family. I am also thankful for our son (I know.. I don’t really mix things up much on these thankfulness posts, but hey, at least I added the sleep book today!). Though he has brought many new areas of difficulty into our lives, they are all seasoned with his smiling face and snuggly body, his exploring personality and his zeal for intensity :). He is one of a kind, and we love him for it.