It’s difficult to write about sleep regression while you’re in it so now it is February and I am reflecting on the months of October, November, December and early January.  Yaaaaawwwwnnnn…..

It started right as his molars were coming in, I believe, which was mid-October.  He mostly had a hard time getting to sleep for his nap and he was mostly napping 2 times a day but was moving towards 1 time per day.  Since he was still nursing, we used that to get him to sleep many days and it worked for the most part.  Naps were usually shorter than they should’ve been (1-1.5 hours instead of 2-2.5 in the case of the 1X/day nap).  

But his molars arrived the week of Oct. 21 and the sleep patterns only got worse.  So we started to suspect the canines!

The second phase of the sleep regression was difficulties going to sleep at night (November).  I was still nursing him to sleep at this point but even with that, he would get up after I placed him in his crib, and scream bloody murder and cry big, loud cries.  John or I would go in and comfort him and often would sit and rock him to sleep for 45 mins to 1 hour.  We also tried ibuprofen at nap time and night time and it worked to some degree (naps were a bit longer sometimes) but was not the “silver bullet” that other had experienced.

The 3rd phase started in mid-December and lasted until January and was the most difficult: Z would wake up at 1 am or 2 am or 3 am and be inconsolable.  Sometimes he would be up for 2-3 hours!!?!?  It was very tough.  We even had to end our New Year’s plans early in LA because he was having such a tough time (and we were driving so it was a *long* drive home – but he and SPL did ok).  Finally in mid-January the canines started poking through one by one – very slowly – and the sleep started changing.  It was just after we had called this new sleep specialist whom our friends had recommended too (isn’t that always the case???  :-).