Do not start to sleep-learn your baby when you have relatives staying over (I know you thought I was a reasonably intelligent, rational person. So did I.).

The naps went well, and they continue to do so today.  Wakey-wakey on the boob, then into the crib awake. He protests for a couple minutes at the most, then either talks, then sleeps, or goes straight to sleep, and stays asleep for at least one hour.

Last night was a different story.

He was over tired and over stimulated from all the fun with his Aunt Angie and cousins Grant and Gannon.  We did our usual bedtime routine (diaper change, story, feed), but he was almost instantly crying when he was put into his crib.

7:40pm in crib, awake and fussy

7:45pm check, VERY pissed off

7:55pm going in to check, but then crying became intermittent, so I didn’t go back in

8:00pm crying escalated, so I checked, he was sitting up and MAD about it!

8:10pm QUIET

Now, according to the book, I’m supposed to “dream feed” him an hour before his normal wake-up time. The idea is that I feed him while he’s still asleep, so he doesn’t wake himself up and trigger the need for his normal sleep association (mom and boob) in order to fall back to sleep.

9:40pm dream feed

This went fine. He never opened his eyes, latched on and fed for about 13 minutes (each dream feed I’m supposed to shorten by 1-2 minutes until he’s completely weaned).

Then.

1:10am wide awake and crying. Now, in order to be good Sleep Easy Solutioners, because this was way before his second schedule dream feed (2:30am) we were supposed to check-in without picking up or nursing him until he falls asleep, then once he’s asleep, wait 10-15 minutes before doing the dream feed, or until the dream feed time rolls around.

Yeah, we didn’t do that.

Afraid he would wake our sleeping guests, I just picked him up and nursed him. This happened again at 5am.

Major fail, however one good thing was that I made sure he stayed awake each time and I put him back into his crib awake each time. He went back to sleep with little or no fuss.

So tonight we plan to dream feed based on his wake-up times last night (1:10am and 5am) so his dream feed are scheduled for midnight and 4am. Good. Times.

All this fuss just to teach him how to fall asleep on his own. Damn boob coma.

He seems happy and boisterous as usual, so I’m confident all this managing is not fucking him up too bad.

I’ll leave you with some cousin love.