January Sleeping Issues--Again, Seriously!?

At least they like to cuddle!

I don’t know what it is about January and my kids, but man oh man, when they are babies they do not like to sleep at all during this month!  I don’t know if it is because we are coming off the high and craziness of the Holiday season, or we just run them so ragged they are overtired, but we struggled with Madelyn’s sleeping this month.  I think back to two years ago in January 2010 with Olivia and it was rough.  She became overtired because we did not follow the sleep schedule over the holidays, a schedule we were unaware at the time we had established.  So this year I was determined to keep things normal over the holidays and consistent.  The sickness threw us for a loop, but we were getting back into a groove by the end of the month.  At this point Madelyn was still in her pack-n-play in the office and Olivia was in her crib in the shared room. 

Over the Christmas break we start with sleep training by letting her cry for five minutes before we rushed in to replace the pacifier or swaddle her up again.  This progressed pretty well and for three nights in a row at the end of break, she slept through the night…like really through the night!  6:15-6:30!  Go Madelyn Go!  So we decided that she was probably done eating at night and we could begin step two of sleep training.  We were not going to replace the pacifier anymore and let her start self-soothing.  She cried for a while on Friday in early January and then for the next four nights we did not hear from her again.  Another victory!  This was way easier than Olivia.  Time to make the move from the pack n play into her crib and with Olivia.  The first two/three nights were rough.  She cried on and off for quite a while before settling herself down and falling back to sleep.  Poor Olivia!  I felt bad for her to be at ground zero of the crying!  Madelyn continue improve though.  The only downside was she was awake, talking in her crib around 5:45/6:00.  Not a huge deal I will take that, if she continued to sleep through the night.  Her talking in the crib did wake up Olivia, so her new wake up time this month was 6:15 versus her old 7:00 time, again not the end of the world. 

For about a week things calmed down.  Then Madelyn started crying during the night again.  We figured it was because of a cold, again.  She was all congesting and Olivia was coughing too.  To Dr. Lancaster we go, finding out both girls had ear infections.  Back to Giant for more antibiotics, only to find out we needed a different card for our prescriptions, so back home, and then back out to Giant.   This was a really fun afternoon.

The antibiotics helped both girls and sleep improved again.  Then another night the next weekend, Madelyn finds her pacifier in the middle of the night and fussed for the next hour.  She got her fingers stuck in the pacifier and as she would get it in her mouth and fall back to sleep, relaxing her hand, it would pull the pacifier out of her mouth.  I went in against my better judgment, and helped her get her fingers out of the pacifier.  She finally went back to sleep for good that night.  The next few nights we would sneak into her room and grab the pacifier out of the crib when it would fall out of her mouth.  It kinda helped, but she would wake up and cry for about 20 minutes at night.  Our daycare women, Miss Sharon, suggested we just get rid of the pacifier, if we were going though all this trouble.  She can put herself to sleep and is a good self-soother.  It was really cute because when we arrived back to her house at the end of the day last Friday, she was excited to report Madelyn did not use the pacifier all day!  She took two naps and only fussed for a few minutes!  We were equally as thrilled and packed up all the pacifiers and put them away, so Olivia could not be the helpful other sister and put it in her mouth!  Friday night—success!  Saturday night, not so great, she cried on and off for 45 minutes in the middle of the night.  When she woke up her diaper was huge, so I thought maybe it was uncomfortable for her.  The same crying happened again on Sunday night.  Convinced something was wrong, I took her to the doctors to be sure her ear infection has cleared up.  It did.  And Dr. Lancaster explained she is going to bed so early, she might be crying because she is hungry.  The new plan was to feed her in the middle of the night again and see how that went.  Frustrated, and feeling like a  awful mom because I am not feeding her when/if she is hungry, for the rest of the week I have gotten up and fed her.  I play a game with myself now.  How fast will she eat and get back to bed.  Things are better, but we still feel like Madelyn will have to do another night or two of crying it out and it would not be fair for Olivia.  We made the choice to move her crib into the office until she is fully sleeping peacefully all night long! 

 I do not know what is going on in the month of January with my two girls, but I for the second time as a mother, I am glad to see this month come to an end!  As I write this blog entry, I am realizing we lack consistency in our sleep approach.  We can only move forward now and hope to get this girl sleeping better soon!