To sleep, perchance to dream

Connor has never been that great of a sleeper. Overall, he was sleeping about 12 hours a day (below the average of 14 hours most babies get). Like all babies, the first few months he was pretty much insatiable, and woke up every 2-3 hours to eat. Poor mom, how she did this and stay in school no one knows. All the books said around 4 months things would slow down a little bit and he would start sleeping longer (stupid books). He maybe woke up every 2.5 - 3.5 hours. We kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting....



A year passed, and we went to maybe 4 hours at a time. Mom stopped feeding him at night, and dad and the bottle took over. Still, every four hours - normally down to sleep at 7 pm, eat at 11 pm, 2 am, 6 am, then awake at 7 am. And for the record, we tried all things. Put him to bed early. Cry it out (not a good technique when your stubborn son can get himself so worked up that he vomits). Gradual extinction (see pissed off and vomiting above). Slowly decreasing the food at each feeding (he would just wake up more often to eat). Putting Dad on the case (despite knowing he would see me, he still woke up). You name it, we did it. And note to future and current parents: the internet is a great resource, except when it comes to getting babies to sleep. Most sights you visit are full of people complaining that their 2 month old is only sleeping 14 hours at a time - help! (I would so love to punch those parents...)



But then about a month ago at 15 months, Connor started to drop his first feeding and would wake up around 3 am and again at 6 am. Then, occasionally, he would sleep through until about 5:30 am (a grand total of about 10 hours of continuous sleep). Amazing! And the best part, he still does it! Now he is switching between being full awake after 11 hours of sleep at 6 am, or another snooze until about 7 pm.



Hooray! Now if we could only get him to sleep more during the day. He has dropped his morning nap, but usually only sleeps for about 1.5 hours in the afternoon. Not complaining mind you, 10 hours of sleeping is pretty great!