Hellobee

Little Piñata was a champion sleeper. Of course he had plenty of setbacks like every baby does, like sleep regressions, teething, and a strange phase around 9 months where he woke up and played and talked to himself for over an hour every morning around 3/4am. But if there was one thing we learned with him in regards to sleep, it was to prevent getting over-tired at any cost!

We learned from the get-go with him that as soon as he showed the slightest sign of being tired, we had to run to his bedroom, swaddle him immediately, give him his pacifier, and he would usually be out cold for a good nap, or for the night. He started sleeping through the night at 12 weeks old, and besides some setbacks here and there, he never stopped! We thought we were baby sleep experts. We had started the “EASY” (Eat-Activity-Sleep-You time) schedule from the Baby Whisperer from the beginning with him, and we thought we were just really good at baby sleep. Once he started dropping naps, we discovered that the key for good sleep and sleeping past 6:30am was the early bedtime. And he absolutely rocked the early bedtime. Every time he got cranky or seemed over-tired, we would move the bedtime even earlier and it would solve everything. He went down for the night by 6/6:30pm for over a year and would sleep for over 12 hours. It was glorious! We wondered why people thought having a baby was so hard.

Ah, how the mighty fall.

We did all the same things with Sweet P. We tried to get her into a routine (not schedule) from the time we brought her home from the hospital. We were sure to use sound machines, swaddles, pacifiers and watched for tired signs like a hawk. We did everything “right” and she was still an awful sleeper. Of course, a lot of this was due to her tummy issues, colic, reflux and tongue/lip ties. But despite figuring out and moving past these issues, she still had such a difficult time settling to sleep. We did some nap training right before 4 months, which gave us some lovely naps for awhile, and she even started sleeping through the night on and off, but as soon as she started getting active around 7 months, we went back to naptime and bedtime disasters.

I never thought I’d get a picture of this baby sleeping! This was some kind of powerful nap here. (Also, our zipadee zips always have the most random patterns, which is what happens when you inherit or buy used baby items.)

Of course, right as we were in the process of getting our house on the market and then moving, she started scooting. This meant that she saw no point in sleeping and only wanting to practicing scooting whenever we laid her down for a nap or at bedtime. We tried implementing all of our “tried and true” strategies from Little P’s infancy, including the early bedtime that was our savior before. We tried moving around naptimes and eventually got to the place that her naps were good again, but just 2 days before we moved to our new house nights became a total nightmare.

Bedtimes were never great for her. From about 8-11pm was her colicky time as a newborn, so we thought this was just her body clock still telling her it was fussy time. There were nights that she fell asleep well for the night around 7pm, but would wake up withing 30 minutes-1 hour of going to sleep for the night crying and screaming. Often it seemed like she just wouldn’t go to sleep no matter the rocking, soothing and bouncing we did. It would sometimes take hours to get her to sleep for the night. Or she would go to sleep and wake up on and off crying getting progressively more upset until about 11pm, when she would finally go to sleep for the night after using all the soothing tools in our toolbelt. We thought it might be her reflux flaring up again, so we added back in the evening dose of Prevacid. But, it didn’t help.

All of this was happening in the days leading up to and following our move to the new house. I felt so discouraged, emotional, exhausted and was a total mess. I felt like I was supposed to be getting settled into our new house, but instead I was spending hours every night trying to get my baby to sleep. There were quite a few tears for sure. One night after she woke up after 45 minutes and being inconsolable we gave in and just got her up and played with her. She was totally happy that little stinker! She was smiling and rolling and scooting and having a blast playing with us. After about an hour of playing we tried again and she went to sleep for the night, but by then it was pretty much our bedtime too. This made us think, maybe she’s not really in pain? Maybe she’s just not tired when we put her to bed for the night?

So, the next night we stretched her final wake time of the day. We waited until she was extremely cranky, and then put her in the bathtub, where she is always happy. Once she got cranky in the tub, we finished the bedtime routine of her book and bottle. This went against everything we had learned with Little Piñata! It felt so strange to be pushing a baby past her point of crankiness! And here we were putting her to bed for the night at 9pm. That was 3 hours later than Little P’s bedtime at her age!

But, you know what? It totally worked. She fell asleep for the night and slept for 12 hours straight. We did the same thing the next few days and it continued. We were shocked and also thrilled! Here we thought all this time that she was over-tired and kept pushing her bedtime earlier, but in reality she just wasn’t tired enough. Of course people always say that every child is different, which we knew especially since our kids don’t share DNA, but we still thought the same sleeping principles would apply to all kids. As it turns out, we were definitely wrong. We have a little night owl on our hands for whom early bedtime doesn’t work in the slightest. She may not go to bed until 8:30/9pm at night, but she almost always sleeps until 8am, which is pretty nice. It took us longer than I would have liked to discover this, but she just has an entirely different body clock than Little P, and honestly, most kids in general.

Waking up big brother from his nap. At least their nap times overlap somewhat!

Since we discovered this, she still hasn’t been 100% sleeping through the night. And of course with every new skill (like pulling up) there are more sleep regressions. But, thankfully we have not gone back to the awful night screaming like we did before. It would certainly be nice if Mr. P and I had more time to hang out in the evenings, but few things are worse than a screaming baby, so it’s worth it. It’s funny that our 3.5 year old goes to bed as much as an hour and a half before our 10.5 month old, but it works.

I have a feeling we will return to this lesson again and again over the years. What may work for Little P will unlikely work the same way for our Sweet P. And that’s ok. We’re getting to know a totally different little human with different needs than her brother and that’s not only ok, it’s great. Of course, I would love for her to eventually go to bed a little earlier so that Mr. Piñata and I can one day watch an entire movie before it’s our bedtime, but until then we will just make every movie a two-part series and be reminded that our kids are happiest when we listen to their individual needs and personalities.

What about your kids? How did their sleeping patterns differ?