Little baby Doodle has now been in his own room at night for almost three weeks. He’s been doing really well overall, only waking once or twice most nights and only had two nights where he didn’t go right back to sleep after feeding. Even with him doing “well” though, I’m still ready for him to start sleeping better. The 6:30 wake up call to get Honeybun off to school in addition to the regular night feedings is all really adding up to make one tired and fussy mommy.
I’ve tried many things to try to get him to sleep better at night. I started trying to increase how often he feeds during the day, even to the point of waking him from naps or “dream feeding” him if he exceeded 2 hours between feeds. I’ve tried getting him to feed longer each time. I’ve tried getting him to take better and longer naps during the day rather than just cat napping. (I did NOT try cutting back his naps as in my experience, young children who sleep more sleep better).
I found, though, that none of those things made any bit of difference. After each attempted change he was still having unpredictable nights. Some where he would sleep until 3:00 or 4:00 before waking and some where he was waking early (like 12:30) and often (like every 2-3 hours). And then I came to a realization about what really was making a difference: water.
I started to notice that days when I didn’t drink very much water he was waking often through the night. I also noticed that on days when I really focused on drinking TONS of water, he only woke once after sleeping 6 or more hours. So now I’m force feeding myself water (I’m not a big water fan and even get an upset stomach when I drink too much) but if it helps me get some sleep, I’ll do what I have to!
