All Through The Night Spiraled into a Baby Re-Boot

Back in November I boasted Nolen slept all through the night from 7:00 until 4:00. I honestly don't know who wrote that. I don't remember it happening, and it certainly didn't happen again after that.

I think from that point on, things progressed and got a little worse, a little bit each day. Last week we hit a low, and had to perform a hard reset, or what is known in the Hokes House as a Baby Re-boot.

Nolen was beginning to get up every 45-90 minutes at night, and that was just not going to fly. Now we went through all possibilities, is he having a growth spurt, is he too warm, is it too dry in our house, should we be facing him to the south to sleep-the standard questions, yet we had no answers. The best and easiest thing to do was to tackle the problem.

We had to start from the basics.

We took away the soother-not cold turkey, but we used it about 90% less, and are using it sparingly now.

We used our old baby soothing techniques, and read a few more new books to reacquaint ourselves with new ideas.

It worked.

After a few terrible nights of screaming, we have slowly been getting more and more sleep again in this household. Carter, if he hadn't before the reboot, has become very accustomed to the sound of his brother screaming-so much so he can sleep through it most times now. Very nice.

I am not saying everything is GREAT, and we are sleeping through the night now. That would be...well, just bad karma. As I type for example, poor Nolen has had a rough evening of settling down, and is squeeking like a small mouse in his bed. I hope he does not get up, but you never do know (well the Shadow knows, but that is a different story), and that is what makes this game of craps so darned much fun.

Not that he wasn't a happy, smiley baby before-but now Nolen seems to be much more content. It could be his age, he is approaching four months-that also can make a difference. But, I think having a little more control over his sleep, and not having to depend on us to pop a soother in his mouth, has given him more power. He seems to want to take the world by storm. Why just tonight, in the bath tub, he was pulling himself up, and you could tell he wanted to sit up in the tub.

Who knows? Other than the Shadow that is.