Yep, it’s that time again. Sleep regression hell!! We have gone through every single possible regression that people talk about, but the worst ones were 4 months, 10/11 months, 15 months, and this 18 month one. One reason why I think they are so awful, is because after the previous regression, your body started to get used to sleeping again. So when that goes out the window, it’s particularly cruel punishment.
Gerrit’s 18 month sleep regression kicked in right around 18-1/2 months. We were starting to have some better nights of sleep: 3 hour stretches were becoming normal, with 4 or 5 hour stretches mixed in. Definitely not ideal, but better than things had been! Around mid-May, things started going downhill: frequent night wakings, difficulty settling back to sleep, late nights & early mornings. It’s always tough when these regressions happen, because I feel like, Haven’t we moved past this? I thought you knew how to sleep better! But since we have been through so many sleep regressions, I knew this one was coming.
So how to deal? Well, I never thought Andrew being on swings shift would be a positive thing, but it has been a godsend to me! Yeah, it’s rough getting through dinner and bedtime on my own sometimes, but one thing I can count on is Andrew getting up with Gerrit every morning.
The sleep regression means that I bring Gerrit to bed more often around 4 or 5 in the morning. If he makes it in his crib until 6 or so in the morning, Andrew will get him up and bring him to me to nurse in bed. Andrew dozes off for a bit longer while I nurse, but once Gerrit is done, he takes him out to the living room and deals with breakfast and playtime with Gerrit until 9 or 10 in the morning. Those extra couple of hours of sleep are heavenly. And they really help get me some extra rest to get through the day without sleeping while Gerrit naps every day.
The crappy thing about major sleep regressions is that they don’t only attack night sleep. The 18 month sleep regression brought difficult naps too. Some days Gerrit would fight his nap for almost an hour. Other days he’d wake up after only 45 minutes or an hour, and I’d have to try to get him back to sleep (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t). When your kid has a rough night (which means you had a rough night) and then they don’t nap well either? SO IRRITATING!
So here we are at about 7 weeks into this mess. We are starting to have better nights, but then we have a really crappy night again.
I wrote everything above this in mid-June. It’s now mid-September, and I saw that this wasn’t published haha. Oops. It’s been a crazy summer, so I’m cutting myself some slack for that. Anyway, we survived the 18 month sleep regression, with all of its ups and downs. I’m not even sure when it improved, since Gerrit’s sleep is never great. We have been traveling for a good chunk of the last month or so, so that never helps things. More on that in a post soon. I hope!
On An Even Kiel 