The Snoozer

For three nights in a row, Oliver slept from roughly 7pm to 4:30am straight. I couldn't believe it! What brought on the change? Your guess is as good as mine. OK, so maybe I have some idea. It seemed to start when we began putting Oliver to bed still awake. Errrr... let me say, for night time, we used to put him to bed slightly awake all the time, and then we did it occasionally. For the last week or so, we've been putting him to bed when he's sleepy, but completely awake.

Back to last night. He woke at 3am. Three o'clock is still OK in my book, but it left Andrew & me baffled. What should we do? Should we let him cry for a while and see if he goes back to sleep until 4:30am? Should I go back to nursing him? Should we try to soothe him in other ways and pick him up, or would that mess up any method of teaching him to put himself to sleep?

I think we did everything wrong! First, we let him cry for about 5 minutes. He wasn't crying hysterically or anything, just fussing. Andrew went in and tried to calm him. It didn't work. After ten minutes, I decided I'd nurse him. I mean, waiting 9 hours between feedings is probably a lot for a little guy. So I nursed him and put him back into bed. He didn't go to sleep. In fact, his crying worsened and got borderline hysterical. I changed his diaper and nursed him again, but he was still freaking out. Was he in pain from teething so much? Was he hot? Was he cold? He seemed fine.

Finally, at 4am, we decided that maybe he just wasn't tired. It was Andrew's turn to deal with a ridiculously early morning, so he got up and grabbed Ollie Bear. No sooner was he down the stairs than Oliver was asleep in his arms. Andrew went back upstairs, he laid Oliver down, and Oliver slept for 45 minutes. He woke up fussing, and we assumed he was up for the day. After 30 minutes of play time with Daddy, though, he fell back asleep and slept until 6:30am.

We're still not sure what the problem was. Heck, maybe it was nothing. After all, Oliver's a baby! But I can't help but worry that he was in pain or something. His skin was a lot worse today. I'm convinced that it is eczema because he's getting scaly patches on his sides and elbows. Also, he's cried in the tub the last three days. He started baby yogurt about a week ago, and I'm going to cut it out of his diet to see if that will help his skin.