Sleepless in… Seymour Johnson

Okay, I know I’m letting myself get too excited about this already, but Gerrit has started PUTTING HIMSELF TO SLEEP AT NIGHT. Yes!

I had been seriously struggling with his poor sleeping both at nighttime and during daytime naps. I mean, I dreaded putting him down for a nap, and my anxiety would rise as evening approached. Some nights I would only get 20-30 minutes of “me” time from the time that I put Gerrit to bed until I finally went to bed myself. It was so frustrating. Andrew would try to help, but he would get fed up with the fruitless process of rocking/patting Gerrit to sleep only to have his eyes pop back open as soon as you put him down in the Pack ‘n Play. Or Gerrit would start trying to suck his arm, and Andrew would come back out with, “He wants the boob.” So it was mostly me dealing with our Sleepless in Seymour Johnson baby. And as soon as I went to bed? Gerrit would wake up, and I would be so tired from trying to get him to sleep for the past 3+ hours that I would just bring him to bed with me. Same with naps: I would often lay down with Gerrit for his naps just so the kid would sleep longer than 20 minutes. I had NO LIFE.

Then the night before the dreaded Daylight Savings Time began, we had a change. We had had dinner with friends of ours who are also living in TLF on the base (the same ones we had had over the evening my water broke!), so Gerrit was going to sleep later than usual. I was afraid we were in for a rough night. I did my normal bedtime routine: bath, lotion, hang out with Daddy, put in sleep sack, lights out, nurse/lullaby. And when I put him down, those eyes opened just like they always do. I patted him for a few seconds, then just lay down on the bed, dreading how long this was going to take. He did his usual things: raising his legs in the air and thumping them down, making little grunts and peeps, and looking around. But then, instead of escalating, he started calming down. And then he stopped moving. I lifted up my head and looked over at him. Was he asleep?! Seriously?

I walked out to the living room and just looked at Andrew.

“What?” he asked.

“I think he just put himself to sleep,” I whispered. And then I told him what had happened.

About half an hour later, we heard him stirring. I groaned.

“Will you please try to pat him back to sleep?” I asked Andrew.

Half an hour later, he came back out. He had a funny look on his face, so I was sure he was going to tell me that I had to go in and nurse him back to sleep.

“What?” I asked. “Is he asleep?”

“Yeah,” Andrew replied. “I never touched him. I just lay down on the bed and watched him that whole time, and he went back to sleep on his own.”

We just looked at each other. And then Andrew asked the question that I had also been thinking: “How long has he been able to do this?” We worried that we had been actually interrupting him while he had been trying to put himself back to sleep for days… weeks maybe! I had read about this in one of the many books I had read, but I didn’t think the things Gerrit had been doing were actually his attempts to self-soothe himself. Funny enough, I had JUST read a blog that very day that had the leg-thumping thing listed as a self-soothing technique.

Gerrit was still asleep when I went to bed later that night. He did wake up about 3 hours after I had originally put him to sleep, so I fed him and put him back in his bed. He woke up so I let him try to self-soothe. Well, I let it go for about half an hour: him talking to himself, thumping his legs around, sucking on his tongue. But then it started to escalate, so I brought him to bed with me again. But it was definitely progress!

So here we are, the next night. And things are going well again. I’m trying not to get TOO excited, but at least now I know Gerrit CAN put himself to sleep. We may not be so sleepless in the near future!