Sometimes the blatantly obvious has to be pointed out to you and when it is you go “DOH! I should have known that”. Pam told Jamie that the problem with our little “person” is she is growing up and maturing and the problem could be mental, when Jamie was little she didn’t like being alone and would cry, this was the DOH! moment for Jamie.
Reagan during daylight awake hours will amuse herself merrily for 45 minutes to an hour but as soon as she gets bored and realises she is alone she begins to moan and mom comes running, if you left her it would turn into a cry! When she amuses herself she has toys around her to play with and generally she is surrounded by familiar stuff. Bedtime has always been completely different because as a new born, RULE 1 do not put anything in the cot or she will almost certainly die, was drummed into us at anti natal classes and we have ALWAYS stuck to that rule.
As Pam pointed out she is older now and needs stimulation otherwise she needs mommy give her nothing to do and she will just need mommy sooner? Jamie read lots of other stuff yesterday and discussed lots of other ideas with her momma and when I got home, we forgot all about no sleep and anything else and made Reagan roll over for an hour hahaha but after that we began to formulate a plan of action. How do we change our routine to make bedtime work for all of us?
- put her to bed awake
- mix up who does what rather than one of us does the whole thing
- let her cry for 5mins then comfort her and leave again
- Surround her with familiar stuff
- Geraldine and Kwackers go everywhere including bed
That was enough to start with and its not set in stone, if it does work we change it until it does! We didn’t get of to a great start because she fell asleep drinking her last bottle so she went to bed asleep but we can work on that one but we did share bedtime which did and has always worked well. The tough bit was letting her cry for 5 minutes because we watched the clock tick during each one but eventually on Jamie’s turn she drifted off into a deep sleep holding Geraldine and gripping Kwackers and we didn’t hear her again all night.
The first time I heard her was 05:30 chirping away but I think we both must have gone back to sleep because it wasn’t until 06:30 that both Jamie and I lay there listening to her playing with her stuff happy as she is in the daytime on her own so we listened for 30 minutes and began the day as normal at 07:00
The war was not been won last night but it was certainly a victory of sorts but I think we feel better because we have a plan and eventually we will get back to normal…..unless we’re thrown a curve ball (did you see what I did there “curve ball” I believe its something to do with baseball?) like teething which I believe can upset things.
