To continue on with the sleeping saga, or lack thereof, my little angel Stella has earned the “Party in my Crib at 3 a.m.” onesie. She is quite the night owl lately and much to my embarrassment, she has learned that one of her parents will come and party with her if she just cries long enough. Now that I am working on an estimated of four hours of sleep per night over the past two weeks, I am more than ready for a solution. I asked my pediatrician what the deal was and he calmly replied, “Their sleeping patterns do change. Isn’t that funny?” No. It is not.
I’ve wondered if it was the fact that her two upper teeth were starting to make an appearance so I went bananas with the Orajel and Baby Tylenol. That didn’t work. I also realized that I may not have been feeding Stella enough so I upped her amounts of solid foods throughout the day. Gerber loves me but Stella did not sleep any more soundly. We are now in quite the nighttime routine and I fear, the longer it lasts, the more permanent it will become.
I started doing some research online (which sometimes is too much of a good thing) and read some articles on “sleep regression”. What drew me to these articles was the fact that all of them were linked to “9 month old not sleeping through the night” comments. BINGO! According to this sleep regression, when our little ones hit certain milestones (growing, teething, crawling, walking, etc.) their bodies physically and mentally are working overtime. This increase in activity can actually cause their little brains to process throughout the night, keeping them from a fitful night’s slumber. Such milestones occur at four months, nine months which is apparently the worst one (thank you very much), and twelve months.
Myth or fact? I am not sure. It makes sense to me but there is nothing but a blog devoted to this “sleep regression”. Their only solution is to wait it out which is what I am doing anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter if it is true or false. In the meantime, at least I have something to blame the bags under my eyes on.
It was Funny being up last night at 3 and seeing multiple mommies comment on fb regarding their little ones 3am-5am party time. I'm not looking forward to that!
ReplyDeleteI have read about the milestone thing at 4, 9, and 12 months. At the moment, I go between teething and Elsie perhaps getting ready to walk, and that may explain her nighttime part-tay. She has been taking 3-5 steps each day here and there, so I'm just waiting for her to walk across the living room or something ;) For the last week though, I think at 3am, you better start running across that freakin' living room, Elsie ;) I chalk it up to her needing us right now and she's not going to be this little forever. My baby is going to be 1 next week ;(
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