Sleep Deprived

This handsome little Moose refuses to sleep! Well, I should rephrase that, he refuses to fall asleep on his own and stay asleep once he is laid down alone.

 

He's an incredibly happy and easy baby with everything else.  He eats like a champ.  He entertains himself and plays well alone.  He loves his sister and laughs at all her crazy antics that mommy does not understand.  His snuggles can cure my grumpiest mood.  And that smile is like sunshine! But this kid does not sleep.  

I've been in denial about his sleep issues for pretty much his whole life.  My mom has been hoping and praying that I'd have a kid with sleep issues to pay me back for all that I put her through.  Well we got extremely lucky with Scoot.  I don't know what I did or didn't do, but she was a great sleeper.  She could put herself to sleep starting at about 4 months - just lay her in the crib and close the door - magic! She would wake up in the middle of the night, but as soon as I snuggled her or nursed her she was back out. And that usually only happened once a night around 4 am (after she'd already been asleep 9 hours).  By the time she was 10 months old she was sleeping through the night 7 pm - 6 am with 2 - 2 hour naps. It was a first time mommy's dream!

Now Mr. Moose, he's a completely different story! He has no self-soothing skills and needs to be cuddled until he falls asleep. Up until about 3 weeks ago, once you cuddled him to sleep, you could lay him down and he would stay asleep. But it has been getting worse. You never know what is going to happen when you lay him down.  Will he stay asleep? Whine and wiggle, but not really wake up? Melt down into total hysterics?  Maybe if that was happening at bed time around 8 pm and then he slept through the night I wouldn't have anything to complain about.  But he's doing that at 8 pm, 11pm, and 4 am. And he has been demanding to be nursed back to sleep in the middle of the night. 

Nap time isn't much better, but a nice 3 hour stretch of sleep in the afternoon actually seems like a win.  Whereas it feels like a total failure at 11pm. 

I'm desperate to teach him some self-soothing skills, but I have no idea how.  And my sleep deprived brain cant think of any way to fix this.

And if this makes no sense- just know I wrote it in 3 parts around the cuddling & nursing of an exhausted baby.  Which is pretty much the way we've been living life the last 2-3 weeks.