When Good Babies Go Bad....

That is the title of an article that I read and it couldn't have been truer. Ever since Jason and I went to San Antonio Keifer's night schedule has been bad. I thought the first night in San Antonio was just a fluke from a different environment and would take a few days to get back to normal. Well after 2 weeks in a row of waking up every 30 minutes to a hour to give him his pacifier and eating at 12:00, 3:00 and 7:00 I knew something had to change. I tried everything I could think of and nothing was working. I even tried winging Keifer off his pacifier. I figured if he didn't have it then he can't wake up every 30 minutes to need it back. After 3 days of that I realized maybe 3 months is a little too young and not the answer. He was to the point where he could fall asleep at nap time without the pacifier but never at bedtime and that was when the problem was. Jason and I were both exhausted and I was so confused as to why "my good baby turned bad"  On August 19th exactly two weeks to the day we went to San Antonio I was up with Keifer at 7:00 feeding him. My eyes were burning from the long night before and I thought to myself something has to change! I knew there had to be an answer so I did what any new mom would do. I turned to my good friend Google. : ) I had no idea what I was looking for or even what to call it so I just typed into the search engine "how to make my 3 month old sleep without waking up for his pacifier" I will tell you I was so surprised at how much came up and I felt so good to know I was not the only one with this problem. The title When Good Babies Go Bad caught my eye and I clicked on it. It started with a list of.... does your baby sleep good for the first 4-5 hours of the night then wake up every 30 minutes to a hour after wards, does your baby wake up crying for the pacifier, do you have to rock your baby to make them go back to sleep, does your baby stay awake for 30-45 minutes in the middle of night before they go back to bed? The whole time I was reading this I kept saying yes, uh huh, yep, that's right, go on. I felt like she wrote the article just for me!!! Then she used the title Four Month Regression. I had never heard of this before but the article explained that this "Four Month Regression" could range anywhere between 3-5 months old. I won't go into the whole article because it was over 15 pages long. It just explained what causes this and how to fix it. That was the important thing! It was the best news I heard and I was glad that there was an answer for me to get Keifer sleeping through the night again. I was so excited that I immediately called Jason and told him what all I read and that we were changing things TODAY. After reading I decided to change Keifer's eating schedule. Instead of the 9-9 I changed it to 8-8 to put him to sleep earlier. At every nap that day I laid him down when he was still awake and let him fall asleep on his own. Which he did. I was surprised at how quickly he picked up on that. The first nap time he cried for 14 minutes before he fell asleep on his own. Every nap for the rest of the day he fell asleep in 5 minutes with no crying. I knew we were onto something and we were actually doing this! As you read before in Keifer's 3 month post he stayed awake for 4 hours at a time no problem. Well I changed that to putting him down for a nap no longer than being awake 2 hours at a time. He never acted tired when he stayed awake 4 hours but it was crucial for his nap times during the day to sleep good at night. I thought I will give this a week for him to get use to the new schedule. Bedtime was of course harder to get him to fall asleep on his own than nap time. He cried at bedtime for 3-4 days before he was able to fall asleep on his own at night. After lots of changes and making sure we stuck with the changes.... HE DID IT!!! I had my good baby back that slept through the night. Keifer didn't even wake up once for his pacifier in the middle of the night. This was Saturday night the 27th. I was right it took one week and Jason and I were so happy. I wanted to make sure that the good night wasn't a fluke and that he actually was sleeping good again so I decided to give it another week. I took a picture of him every day he slept through the night again. After 7 days I figured it was safe to say he was back and not a fluke.

Day One (Saturday the 27th)

 Big Stretch!!!

Day Two (Sunday the 28th)

Day Three (Monday the 29th)

Blurry legs are my happy boy kicking : )

Day Four (Tuesday the 30th)

Day Five (Wednesday the 31st)

Day Six (Thursday the 1st)

Day Seven (Friday the 2nd)

I'm glad we are over this "Four Month Regression" hump and my smiley boy is getting the sleep he needs. Not to mention the sleep that Jason and I are getting also!