We Got Our Lives Back!

Most of you know we've had issues with Jake sleeping. He's never been a sleeper. When we brought him home from the hospital everyone kept saying, "now, Angie, you have to sleep when the baby sleeps!" I was soon asking, "what do you do if your baby never sleeps?" We had such a hard time getting him to sleep. When he was about 4-5 months old, he slept through the night for the first time. That only lasted for a couple of nights. He would be doing so good and then he'd get sick and we'd be back at square one.

Two weeks ago, on a Saturday night, Jake woke up at around 1:30am and didn't go back to sleep until 3:30am. We thought it was a fluke thing. This continued for several nights. We were completely drained. Then last weekend Jake ended up with a sinus infection and was miserable. Of course he wasn't sleeping then. After 10 nights of no sleep, Bill and I decided to just let him cry when he woke in the night. It wasn't something we wanted to do, but we didn't know what else to try.

Tuesday night he woke around 1:40 and cried for 30 minutes. He would cry for a few minutes, stop, and listen to see if we were coming to get him. I stood at his door a couple of times to see what he was doing. He was just standing in his crib, looking around his room, crying. After that 30 minutes, he was out and slept until we woke him at 6:00am to get ready for "school." He was a little irritable...I think he was mad at us. Wednesday night he woke around 11:30pm, cried for 5 minutes and was out. We again had to wake him at 6:00am. He didn't want to get up, but he wasn't cranky at all. When I picked him up from day care yesterday they told me he had been waking up from his naps very happy. Last night he woke around midnight, cried for all of 10 seconds, and went back to sleep until we woke him at 6:00am. I guess it didn't take him long to figure out the drill, thankfully.

Listening to him cry the first night was torture. I just kept wondering what was going through his little mind. "Where are my parents? Why aren't they coming to get me? What's going on? This just isn't right!" I thought it was going to be a much longer process. Hopefully I haven't just jinxed us. It's been great getting sleep at night. I'm not tired when I get to work. I don't constantly think of taking a nap. We have regained control of our lives!