Going CRAZY

I think I am about to go crazy! Ha, ha!! It is 3:20am here in Korea and we are in the process of trying to teach Caden how to soothe himself to sleep. Obviously if it's 3:20am then things are not going well.

Caden is just over 5 months old and has shown he CAN sleep through the night, so we are just encouraging him to make it a nightly habit. Unfortunately, Caden has been swaddled for every nap and every night since he was 4 days old. I have tried to take it away before, but in desperation to get some sleep I always end up swaddling him. AND Caden has slept in his car seat since he was five weeks old. It started with the reflux and the car seat brought comfort. I should have taken the car seat away when we started the reflux meds and he became a "happy spitter" and wasn't hurting due to the reflux anymore.

So we have a bunch of things we are trying to deal with in one night: no swaddle, no car seat, and no middle of the night feedings/rocking. This all came about because Caden has outgrown all of his swaddle-me blankets AND the last few nights we've all gotten very little sleep because Caden has learned to wake up and cry for our attention/comfort. Although very sweet and heart warming that he just wants us... it is not healthy for all of us to go with interrupted sleep like that. So we decided this weekend is the perfect opportunity to try some sleep training.

Of course we read lots of books, and talked with a LOT of people whose opinions we respected and we had an idea in mind. Of course nothing goes to plan!! We thought about soothing Caden without picking him up every 10-20 minutes...but he went right to sleep!!

THEN, he woke up about 2 hours later. The other option is just letting him cry/fuss and not going to him. Well, we sort of ended up doing this option because Caden is actually not crying. He does a small cry for a few seconds, then little fusses and grunts, and then SILENCE! We hope each time that the silence will be sleep, but a few seconds (and sometimes minutes) later, he's crying again...then fussing....and then soothing himself in to silence, but not sleep.

I've NEVER heard of this happening before without sleep EVENTUALLY being the outcome...however, Caden has been at it now for 5 hours! Yes, you read that correctly FIVE hours! Please remember, it has NOT been 5 hours of relentless sobbing and crying. He's actually cried VERY little and has mainly just fussed (and all moms know there is a big difference between a cry and a fuss).

Well, at this point (after 5 hours of listening to his antics) it had been 7 hours since he last ate so we decided to just offer him a feeding to see if the fussing had turned in to being hungry. Not the case because he barely wanted to nurse and instead tried to sleep in my arms or smile up at me. He didn't seem all that upset or anything, he wasn't sobbing or doing that funny breathing thing we all do after we've been crying... it's almost like he was really asleep all that time, but crying in his sleep! It's insane. We have now resorted to going in every 10-15 minutes and soothing him, without replacing his paci....

That didn't last long because he is now crying more and fussing less with our frequent visits to his bedisde... so we sit... and wait... and pray for wisdom as we try and figure out what to do next and how long to let this go on...

I will let you all know how it goes! UGH!!!!