Axel has decided that babies do not need to sleep. They certainly do not need to nap. Naps are for the weak and foolish, and Axel does not want to be lumped in either of those categories. The dreaded, evil four month sleep regression is upon us. Axel's tripling - make that quadrupling or quint...something - of nightly wakings and deep nap aversion has smacked me upside the head, tackled me, and twisted my arm until I've cried uncle.
Here's the sleepless baby zombie's sort of schedule before reaching four months of age: go to sleep at 7 - 8 pm, sleep until 2 - 3 am, eat, then back to sleep until 6 am. It only existed for about two weeks, but it was heavenly. I even sort of liked the one time he got up at night, cuddling him in my arms as he nursed and seeing his sleepy grin when I changed his diaper.
Then, one night just before the eve of his four month birthday, Axel woke up at eleven. And at one. And at three. And at four, and every fifteen minutes after that until 6:30 am. This coincided with our attempt to break the swaddling habit, but these two now appear to be separate - whether swaddled or not, he doesn't want to fall asleep and he sure doesn't stay asleep. As for daily naps, he went from reliably nodding off every two to three hours for naps ranging from 20 minutes to an hour and a half, to refusing to nap for longer than five minutes unless in the sling or in the car or in stroller.
At night, we put him down in his Pack and Play next to my side of the bed. Then, he wakes up - sometimes cooing, sometimes immediately yelling as though the boogeyman just tried to bite off his ear. My husband has tried to rock him back to sleep, which buys me maybe 30 minutes more of sleep before I get up and feed Axel. Rolling over and popping the pacifier in his mouth gets me about five minutes. In the early morning hours, nothing seems to work except bringing Axel up from his Pack and Play between the two of us - and I must be either holding his tiny hand or have my hand on his stomach - for him to go back to sleep for more than a dozen minutes. This happens more often on nights when my husband's at the fire station - Axel wakes up more often, and I also bring him up into my bed more often, since I'm exhausted and, at 4 am, whatever works the fastest to get your baby to sleep seems like the best short-term solution. While I'm not opposed to co-sleeping in theory, I don't like it much in practice. I don't sleep well when I'm worried about rolling over and crushing my tiny baby boy, and I like to have mounds of covers piled on top of me when I sleep, covers that must be pulled off of me when Axel's on the bed.
None of the methods of extending his sleep that we've tried seem to work, and I think we've tried everything we're willing to try from white noise to creating the perfect bath-baby massage- But Not the Hippopotamus-bedtime routine, since I'm not going to give him solid foods before he's six months old. According to our pediatrician, the solid foods and sleeping longer theory is just an old wives' tale. Axel can fall asleep on his own, when I put him down drowsy and full of milk at night; he just doesn't stay asleep, and he resists naps as though they're poison. I know it works for some, but the full on cry-it-out route isn't going to work for us at this point (though I do sometimes let him fuss a bit and, once in awhile, he settles right back down). When Axel cries, he gets himself more and more tense, working up into a fervor of sorrow and terror and anger and it's not the sort of thing that either of us can endure. He doesn't just quiet down after five minutes and, while I imagine he would stop crying eventually, I'm not willing to wait and see how long that would take.
I am a girl who needs her sleep. Sleep, chocolate, and running keep me sane and away from depression. I can fall asleep anywhere, at almost any time. In grad school, I napped on my man's shoulder in bars a few times. I never pulled an all-nighter in college because, even with the shakes from too much No Doze and soy lattes, I just couldn't keep myself awake. I can't think of anything nicer than an afternoon nap on a couch warmed by the sun. And babies need sleep, too.
Axel, however, does not understand any of this. You can't reason with babies. All of my pleading has failed to convince him to sleep a bit longer. My attempts to communicate with his subconscious by whispering into his ear about how much he loves sleep and how he's going to sleep all night long as I rock him don't gain me any extra winks. He doesn't care when I tell him he's being a huge butthead, though calling him does make me feel a little bit better and sometimes sets off one of those exhausted giggling fits. Babies, I am even more convinced, are crazy. He's got to sleep eventually, right? I mean, I've never heard of a fifteen-year-old who needs his parents to rock him to sleep at 3 am. If he wakes up hungry when he's fifteen, he can get his own damn snack. All I can do is ride out the newest wave of baby insanity.
