Sleepyhead

One of the side effects of our great Christmas marathon is that Alex's previously brilliant sleep pattern (one awakening per night) has got all shot to hell.  First, it was sleeping in funny places.  Then it was the cold.  Then being back home.  Then being away again (Aberdeen, this last weekend).  He's now far more disturbed over night than he used to be.  It's pretty demoralising.

It's also hard to know how to deal with it.  The difference between "I've awoken and am a touch confused and grumpy, but will settle on my own/with a quick shhhh" and "I am hungry and wet" is impossible to spot at 2am.

While Alex was sleeping well, our overnight system was that Nic would feed and change him to let me get a reasonable night's sleep for work the next day.  Because we're creatures of habit, and also because I'm a lazy git, we didn't change this routine when Alex started waking more.  Suffice to say the toll taken on Nicola was pretty high.

We've not got a new system in place.  By default, before 3am if Alex wakes, I go and try to get him back to sleep with the head-pin shush.  This is usually, but not always, successful.  (The last two nights he's woken at 12am and refused to go back to sleep.)  The first awakening after 3am, Nic does the feed and change routine.  So far, it's been pretty successful.  I'm far better than Nic at getting back to sleep, so it doesn't matter too much if he wakes me up three times in an hour and half.  (Like last night.)  Plus, we each have a half of the night where we don't need to respond unless called in by the other.  (This happens more to Nic than me, it must be admitted.)

Hopefully Alex will, over time, get back to only waking up once, then maybe not at all, during the night.  Of course, that might be a while away yet!