We Four Olsons: Kaboom! It All Goes To Hell

After the second night of no sleeping, I think we can safely say we are experiencing the dreaded 4 month sleep regression (...and a week early! Way to be an overachiever Ash!). While we have been struggling with naps, bedtime has been a breeze. Since June 7th Asher has been sleeping through the night (isn't it funny how I remember the EXACT day that I got 8 hours of sleep for the first time since February 22nd? ...and that I remember the exact day that I last got 8 hours of sleep? Oh sleep...). Around 8 pm, we head upstairs, dim the lights, get Asher into jammies, feed him, read to him, and then he snuggles on me until he is almost asleep and then it's a peaceful move to the crib. No fussing. Sleeping baby. Easy. Until Wednesday night. Wednesday was a bit of a struggle. He went to sleep right away but woke up three hours later. Eventually I had to feed him to quiet him down and after that he would wake up and make noise every two hours or so. Thursday morning, Asher looked like this:

Sleeeeeepy Baby

So naturally, yesterday I spent the entire day wondering "What did I do wrong?". Was he not warm enough? Was crib training throwing off crib sleeping at night? Should I swaddle him better? Should I not swaddle him at all? Does he need more naps? Less naps? So yesterday we relaxed the nap rules a bit and I even joined him for 30 minutes at the end of the day. He got the perfect amount of sleep during the day, was happy and playful all night, and was sleepy by the time we started getting ready for bed. Everything looked like it was going well. He fell asleep nursing, then fell asleep while being read to-- by the time I put him in his crib he was totally ready to snooze. Any other night and this would have been the dream scenario, he would have gone down without a peep and slept until 6 a.m. But this was not any other night. Instead, all hell broke loose. He was quiet for about two minutes. Then, oh boy. For the next three hours Asher went on a 'no sleep' rampage. We tried letting him cry it out for a few minutes at a time, we fed him, we held him, we changed him, we rocked him. Repeat. For hours. Nothing worked. Finally, around midnight he fell asleep. Not because of anything we did, because he couldn't sustain the feeble hold on wakefulness he'd been refusing to let go of for what felt like forever. I thought as I lay in bed, completely still, afraid that my breathing would wake him up, that if he really fell asleep he would sleep until 8 a.m. Yeah, that was just naive nonsense. About every hour Asher would stir, cry, kick (by kick I mean lift both legs up in the air and slam them down on his mattress) until I got up, gave him his pacifier, and brushed his forehead. A few times I had to hold his arms down at his side (adding a little 'umph!' to the swaddle that he can now bust out of in about two seconds) until he relaxed. He ate again at 4:15 and whimpered himself to sleep for about twenty minutes. An hour later he was wanting to be held and spent the next two hours sleeping on mom.

So here we are. I've read that this regression will last 1-2 weeks while he goes through this developmental growth spurt, so I'm just bracing myself for many more nights of sleep struggles. The good news is: a) this will end, b) along with this comes really fun new skills that we are watching Asher learn every day, c) I'm off the hook for nap training for a while. We are in survival mode. Whatever we need to do to get through the next two weeks, we are doing it. This baby can nap wherever he pleases until this phase passes (and I guarantee you it isn't going to be in a crib).

We were hoping to have a small handle on napping before the guests we have coming over the next few weeks arrive, so we apologize in advance, we are still at the mercy of a 16 pound ball of nap angst. Lucky you, you'll get to partake!

Grandma Julie gets in tonight and is here for the weekend. We are very excited for her to meet Asher, and particularly thrilled to have an alert, non-sleep deprived adult around who is wanting to hold a baby all day.

Here are some pictures from this morning:

Asher getting ahead of the game, starting to put on his onesie

before I took off his pajamas.... clever boy.