So it’s been over two weeks since Samuel switched to sleeping in a bed. The first two nights went really well. Unfortunately, things haven’t really continued that way (at night; during the day has been ok, although we’re still staying with him until he’s asleep). On the Thursday he started getting up shortly after getting put to bed in the evening, and that has continued most nights since. We decided to let him get up once and then put hi back to bed and stay with him until he is (mostly) asleep. That works, but it takes 30 to 90 minutes, so we unfortunately lose a good part of the evening (and dinner is quite delayed). I tried just repeatedly putting him back to bed a couple of times, but after putting him back 20 or 30 times he was just getting more upset and therefore awake. We might change this system soon, since nothing really seems to be improving.
He sometimes wakes during the night, but when put back to bed goes back to sleep pretty quickly. I think this will stop on its own.
The mornings aren’t great, either. Sam wakes up between 5am and 6:15am pretty much every morning. We used to get up around 7:15am. It’s possible that he was waking up around that time before and just staying quiet in the cot, but I don’t think he would have been quiet for two hours. Maybe he woke up and went back to sleep, but he’s not willing to do that now. So this means that Olyvia and I are getting up some time between 5 and 7 these days. I still work until the same time at night, so this means some pretty short nights. We’re still trying to figure out what we can do about this.
Now, I understand that many people have things much worse than this. Until now, Samuel has always slept pretty well, and we have had over a year of 12 hour (7pm to 7am) sleep, with sometimes 3 hour naps during the day. We’re grateful for that, and just hope that we can get back to something close to that.
Samuel changed to sleeping in a bed yesterday. He had his last night in the cot on Monday night, and attempted to have a nap in the cot on Tuesday afternoon (turned out that there wasn’t any sleep). After that, we took the side rails off the cot, and swapped the foot for the shorter end. It’s not quite a ‘real’ bed, but it looks more-or-less like one, and we didn’t feel that buying a new bed for him made sense at this time (and anything bigger wouldn’t fit well in the room).
I always check in on him just before I go to bed (11:30 or so) – normally turning him around, tucking him in, and so on. When I did this, I found that he’d fallen to the floor at some point, but hadn’t made (nearly) any noise doing so (or we would have heard him), and hadn’t woken up as a result. I’m sure this won’t be the last time!
