The sleep solution - at least the current solution - is stomach sleeping. Sleeping face down, with his arms splayed out and face smushed against the mattress, is apparently Axel's preferred sleep position. Maybe for months he's been longing to be belly-down at night, and was thwarted by our committment to the anti-SIDS back to sleep approach. I don't blame him - I like to sleep on my stomach, too, especially now that I'm not carrying six pounds of baby and twenty plus pounds of amniotic fluid and pudge in my belly. Because I'm the sort to follow the doctor's recommendations precisely, especially when they have anything to do with death, we still put him to sleep on his back - it's just that he's figured out that he can immediately roll over, wiggle around for five minutes, and burrow down into his red crib sheet before passing out. Though I've twisted his chin to the side when his nose is smashed down, I'm not so paranoid that I roll Axel back over to his back again and again. If I started that, I'd be doing nothing but baby rolling all night long. If he's able to do his rolly-poly nightly settling routine, he's also able to roll back, should he need to.
Let me back up and explain our other sleep-promoting steps over the past few weeks. First, we moved Axel in to his own room. I thought he would have moved from his spot in the Pack N Play next to our bed to his bedroom sooner, but his room wasn't quite finished. See, we were insane enough to decide to renovate our kitchen, add on another bedroom and bathroom, and reconfigure the office (now nursery) starting when I was just over five months pregnant with Axel. Things didn't go as planned, as they tend to when construction or children are involved, and, after the delays of our pokey, half-competent contractor, Sean's just now finishing up the trim on the doors, windows, and baseboards. The move in to Axel's room went pretty smoothly and didn't, as I worried that it would, backfire and cause even more night wakings and restlessness. He settled right in, happily grabbing at the yellow wall during diaper changes and spitting up on the red and gray carpet tiles.
Axel's also been partaking of the sticky pasty deliciousness known as rice cereal mixed with breast milk. Except when he's sick, he loves it - grabbing for the spoon with two hands and making his monkey face of excitement at it. It reminds me making an elaborate paper mache earth for my 6th grade geography class. Get out some newspaper strips and a balloon and we could make our own solar system with the leftovers. I don't think this has had much of an affect on his sleep, but he seems to like it, and so we're going to keep on offering him bland mush.
We're also fiercely protective of the bedtime routine. We rushed home from a slow restaurant, changing our dine-in order to to-go, to get home in time to start the rice cereal, bath, baby massage, books, then bed routine. With all of this, and allowing a bit of nighttime fussing - never more than ten minutes, because I am thin-skinned and weak - Axel's down to waking up just once per night.
Now, with his cold still in such force that he coughed so hard he made himself throw up, our sleeping through the night plan of attack is on hold. We've withdrawn the sleep battling troops for some R & R, since we've all been hit by the same late season cold, cough, and aches. Waking up once per night isn't really so bad, though, especially when compared to the four plus wakings we had before. The most annoying sleep situation right now is that he's woken up at 5 am the past few mornings, and only been willing to fall asleep and stay asleep until 6 in my husband's arms. The kid's sick, so I can see how sleeping cuddled up against a warm body would be comforting in the early morning. I'm hoping the early morning waking when not yet ready to wake will pass when the cold does.
I'm obsessed with sleep - who's sleeping, how long, why, why not. I'm a sleep-information addict, but all that information's just filling in for the real thing: my sleep craving will only be satisfied by the elusive, blissful full night's rest.
