Day and night

Sleeping beauty
Unsleeping beauty

Although these pictures were taken around dinnertime, this is what they look like at 10pm, 11pm, midnight, 1am…. you get the idea.

Gavin has decided he doesn’t want to sleep at night. This started a few days ago. On Christmas I moved him to his own room as he was disrupting Riley’s sleep. The last time he eats before bed is anywhere from 10 to 11, once he is done his bottle, to bed he goes. Most times by the end of the bottle he is asleep or very close to it. As soon as his is lying in his crib, he begins the all out wail.

Now this isn’t a small cry, or even a large cry…this is the cry of all cries. He screams so loud I swear he hurts his vocal cords. It’s the type that mirrors the way you yell at a concert, where when you are done it hurts to talk for a day. He forgets to breathe and then it’s even worse. The first night I thought I would just let him cry it out….once the wailing began….well I just couldn’t. He cries so hard he winds up getting the hiccups and takes in so much air you have to burp him a few times. That makes it worse as well.

On Christmas when I went in, I picked him up and he quieted right down and looked at me with wide eyes. It took me about 45 minutes and a few trips back and forth to realize he was just awake. So I trundled upstairs, turned the TV on to a log burning channel (not very stimulating), put him in the chair and he just stared at the TV. No soother….nothing.

We stayed this way, with him watching the log and me trying to get a few zzz’s on the couch until his next bottle. After the next bottle, I tried again, no such luck, but I was seriously lacking in the sleep department. So I brought him to bed with me and propped him with a pillow under his belly as he seemed to have a lot of gas.

By 6am he was sound asleep and content (I won’t say happy). He slept most of Boxing Day and I thought maybe he was over his problem whatever it was. Not so, again when we went to put him down in his crib around 10:30, all out screams. Glenn suggested to again let him cry it out. There are certain cries that I can handle and one that I can’t, so again, I brought him upstairs, plunked him in his seat and turned on the TV.

We survived another long night, this time with some help from Glenn. Yesterday I tried to keep him up as much as I could, hoping to break this routine. We went for dinner at my sisters and tried to keep him awake and Grama and Great Grama were there, so that helped. I also started to change over his formula, thinking that maybe that was an issue (he had some really bad gas).

Last night, when we got home from my sisters, we left him in his carseat until the next time he ate as I was in fear that he would wake up and not go back to sleep. Maybe he just had a bug, maybe the new formula helped (haven’t fully graduated), I’m not sure….but he slept for stretches that mirrored Riley.

Riley has had some good sleeps as well since I moved Gavin. I wasn't planned on splitting them up so soon, but that's two nights in a row that Riley has slept for good stretches.

Even though the boys are "twins", they are only twins because they shared my uterus for 7 months. They are different in all other aspects!