Ethan's Sleeping Habits

In the past 5 months, Ethan's sleeping habits have changed dramatically. At 6 months old, he would take 3 naps a day and wake up multiple times in the night, sometimes not going back to bed for a couple of hours. This made for an interesting month long stay with Jon's parents. I'm sure whenever Ethan woke up crying in the night or we watched TV at all hours in the morning, waiting for Ethan to get tired again, that Jon's parents laid upstairs in their bed, tossing and turning, hoping for some peace and quiet. Of course, they wouldn't admit to that though... :) At this point Ethan would only fall asleep in our arms with a bottle in his mouth.

After moving to LA, Ethan has gone through a tough transitional period. Instead of 3 naps a day, he now takes two.... and finally sleeps through the night all by himself!!! We went from rocking with a bottle to fall asleep, to rocking with a pacifier to fall asleep, to putting him in bed with a bottle to fall asleep, to now... going to sleep all by himself! Believe me, the journey was tough to get to this point, but the end is well worth it. As far as cry therapy, Ethan only cried himself to sleep for about a week and even then most days were no more than a couple minutes of crying. For this, I am thankful. I would much rather deal with the months and months of rocking him to sleep at all hours of the night than to have to continue cry therapy for months. :)

For moms out there whose babies are getting to the point where you would like to start molding their sleep patterns to better fit yours.... do what feels best. With baby #2 I plan on take a similar route: breastfeeding in bed, then rocking/feeding to sleep, then giving them a bottle in bed, then cry therapy... but I plan on hopefully getting through this process sooner than I did with Ethan. Waking up multiple times in the night at 9 months old was not fun anymore. Ha! Cry therapy wasn't that bad, especially when you have a husband who is willing to help and comfort you and keeps you from caving in. Everyone is different, but we chose to let Ethan cry for 5 minutes at a time then pick him up and cuddle with him for about another 5 minutes until he was happy and tired again. Repeat. I think our worst night only lasted for about a half an hour or 45 minutes. Thank goodness.

Since Ethan is no longer needing our excellent rocking skills, he has started falling asleep randomly on his own or in the weirdest positions. :)

I can't believe Ethan is almost one! We caved and got him his birthday present early. Jon has been eyeballing this ball pit since Ethan was born and could not wait until he was old enough to play in it. Ethan LOVES it! At this point he just sits in the ball pit, kicking and throwing the balls and clapping his hands. Great purchase. :)