Bait and Switch

Sadly, this post has been a few weeks coming. I wish things would show signs of changing course, but it doesn't appear to be headed anywhere else.

Aria pulled a bait and switch on me. 

She spent the first three months of her life sleeping peacefully anywhere and everywhere she had the chance. She slept so much I actually thought something might be wrong with her. But no, she was just an amazing sleeper.

She hit three months, and the sleeping overnight started to get messed up. She started to have swaddle problems.

She hit four months, and she went down to three naps a day, and decided that she wanted to sleep on her side (but couldn't stay in that position on her own).

She hit five months, and decided she no longer wanted to sleep in her own bed, but in ours.

Now at five and a half months, she decides that going to sleep is going to be a battle every. Single. Time. Not only that, but she sleeps so fitfully that she wakes herself up constantly.

I thought I had a baby that was going to be amazing at sleep!  Nope. Bait and switch.

She still needs a lot of sleep. She is REALLY cranky when she gets tired.  But she will no longer go down easily. It takes me feeding her laying down, plus staying with her holding the pacifier in her mouth for her to sleep. And then, she will still sometimes wake up every 45 minutes (even though she isn't ready to wake up) and I will have to come back in and roll her onto her side and stick the pacifier back in because she can't soothe herself.

Avonlea was awful for the first several months, but at least I could put her in her own bed and she would get herself to sleep relatively easy. She would scoot and travel around the bed, but never really wake up. Once she woke up, she was actually ready to wake up. Aria is NOT this way. She needs constant coaxing to get to sleep, and then if she rolls over at all she wakes up angry and needs more coddling to get back to sleep.

I know you're not supposed to compare your kids to each other, but it's hard not to in this case, when one is doing so terribly, and you have fond memories of the other.

Someone told me that it is really helpful to do your best to get your kids napping at the same time. And thankfully, this actually works really well for us. Aria usually goes down for a second nap at noon, I fix Avonlea's lunch and she goes down between 12:30 and 1. Aria sleeps for about 3 hours, Avonlea is down for 3 or 4 hours.

The problem is that Aria has no idea how to soothe herself--because I am constantly trying to keep her from crying out during naptime because Avonlea is sleeping, too! Since Avonlea takes such a long nap, you can imagine how ROTTEN she is if she doesn't get a nap. Aria cries and wakes Avonlea up, so I am doing whatever I can to make sure that doesn't happen. I kind of wonder if all second babies are like this--terrible at self-soothing because moms don't want them to cry and wake up the older kid.

I would like to do a little bit of cry it out, but there just isn't a good time to do it. We are in a 2-bedroom house, and the bedrooms are so close together. I wish there was an upstairs, or some separation between the rooms or something so I could work more with sleep training Aria without messing up Avonlea.

*sigh*