Sleep

We are trying to make more progress on the sleep front, but it is very hard for all of us because it involves so much crying and sleeplessness. AJ generally goes down now at bedtime with relatively minimal crying, but our main issue is that he still wakes up 5-6 times in the night. The sleep books indicate that he should be waking up once a night at most at his age. Last night we tried feeding him only three times in the night and letting him cry it out the other times he woke up. The plan is to eventually weaning him down to two feedings and then one. This seemed to work okay with only 2-10 minutes of crying during most of the wakeups. The only glitch was after I fed him for the third time at 5:15, he cried all the way until I went in to pick him up at his normal wakeup time of 7:00. The worst part was that his jammies were wet around his neck area from all of his tears, and instead of being a happy, smiling boy ready to greet the day, he wanted to be held and did 10 minutes of the gulping and jagged intake of breath that all little kids do after crying. Even though I believe that we are doing what is best for his long-term ability to sleep, I feel awful listening to him cry when I know that I could give him short-term comfort.