When the cat's away the mice will...

sleep, evidently.

Anyone who's reading this knows that I have never had the luxury of being one of those snooty new moms who haughtily announces that her baby has been sleeping through the night since six weeks old. I came to terms with that a long time ago, and was satisfied that Orion would go to bed at 7pm, wake up once and take a bottle as we were going to bed around 11pm, and then would wake up again around 3am for another quick snack before sleeping until 8am.

Unfortunately, over the past six weeks or so, that's all gone out the window. He still goes down around 7pm and makes it until 11pm, but then all hell breaks loose. He spends the rest of the night tossing and turning. He's still been taking (at least) one bottle overnight but from 2am until 5:30am he fusses and squirms, needing constant settling. Then at 5:30 he poops, and I'm up for the day because I've gotten up to change him.

But that's me.

With Doombot its a whole 'nuther story. For the first night I was out of town, he did have some trouble getting the baby to sleep. He was starting to early, having picked the Squirrel up from daycare early enough that he missed his last nap then trying to compensate by putting him down for the night at 5:30pm. Yeah, not gonna work. But for the last two nights, he's come about as close to Orion sleeping through the night as I think we're going to see for a while. In bed asleep at 7:00, up at 11:00 for a bottle, then back down sleeping soundly until the 5:30am poop.

It turns out that the magic formula (and in all honesty I've suspected this all along) is that the baby got to lay in bed with him without any contact. He got to lay in my spot with his arms all the way outstretched, with nobody harassing him with all the snuggling and patting that he gets from me. Sorry little ingrate.

The solution is going to be a major pain in the ass. Tomorrow night, we're pulling the full-size crib into the bedroom. We'll take the side off and push it up beside the bed on my side. He'll be safe, close by where I don't have to get up to put him back down in the night, and he won't have to be touched while he sleeps. Maybe we'll be able to recreate Doombot's results.