So on 2-5-10 and 2-23-10 I posted problems with my 6 month old not sleeping well at night. I got some great advice from some but got the best so far yesterday from my fiend Kristy.
My son sleeps on his stomach and always has. He hates sleeping on his back and won’t do it from the day he was born. I use to freak out about this because of all the hype about SIDS and stomach sleeping so I use to try and force him on his back. Well when he was not sleeping at all I gave into his stomach sleeping and that helped a lot. I just slept in the room with him so I could hear every breath all night long.
This worked out for awhile but now that he can squirm and move it was making it difficult for me to sleep. He is a pretty loud sleeper and would squirm himself into the corner of his crib and then really upset so I would be getting up every 20-30 minutes to pull him back down to the middle of his mattress.
He can hold his chest and head up fully and can roll over from his back to his stomach and CAN but has only rolled from his stomach to his back 3 times. He gets mad when I try to make him keep doing it.
The problem is that he was/is getting way to use to me being there for every single move he makes and I was/am not letting him fend for himself at all. This way he knows that all he has to do is make a few little noises and I will do everything for him. This was working when he could not move at all on his own but now it is making a very bad sleeping habit and making me so tired and grouchy that I need to do something different.
Kristy told me that when her kids are sick with a stuffy head etc she puts a blanket underneath one end of the crib mattress to just raise their head up very slightly and this has helped. So I did this last night to see if it would help with his squirming into the corner and it totally worked! He still moved to the side of his crib a bit but he can move himself over, I just have to make him want to do it.
I slept in another room so I could not hear every little sound but close enough that I could hear if he got really mad. I got 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep! I am so excited about this. He did not cry until 6:30 and I went in as he was slowly starting to wake up. I did lay with him for 45 min as he was in and out of sleep trying to wake up and at 7:15 he was totally awake. I think a few more nights like this and he should be broken of the Mommy habit. I may not be such a witch during the day if I keep getting some sleep too. I feel and hear myself at times and I just think “chill out woman.” It is hard to “chill out” when you are so darn tired.
Thanks Kristy!