Sleep Regression : by jean

In my last post, I vented about how my sleep champion had turned into a sleep nightmare: he started waking up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden forgot how to sleep on his own.  Read more about it here.

I don't do well when I don't get my beauty sleep.  But I was very encouraged when my friend called me as soon as I published my last post and told me about this 18-19 month sleep regression.

So I did some research, and it's a real thing!  We don't necessarily have to blame it on teething all the time, although that's not completely out of the picture.  Sleep regression is sort of a developmental stage.  They are becoming more aware of what's going on and often have separation anxiety.  They are also becoming more independent and opinionated which often results in not wanting to go to sleep when you (the parent) want them to.

I remember one night, I was doing my normal bedtime ritual with Miles: brush his teeth, find his hippo (thanks Mira!), let him turn off the light, pray, say goodnight, and put him down in his crib.  As soon as we turned off the light and got ready to pray, he screamed, "No, No!" and started shaking his head and got very upset.  He KNEW what was going to happen next...and didn't want it to happen.

The good news is that this is all temporary.  We didn't do anything wrong, and it will eventually pass (at least that's what my research tells me).  It can take 2-6 weeks for babies to get past this.  AND, you don't have to re-sleep train them-- they already know the drill but are just going through a phase. They say to make efforts to comfort them more during this phase to help them get through it.

Before Miles started his sleep regression phase, we would put Miles down after our bedtime ritual and just walk out of the room.  He would usually lay down and go to sleep pretty easily with maybe a couple cries here and there.  These days, we've been staying in the room with him until he's almost completely asleep.  He'll occasionally look up to make sure one of us is still there.  That's been helping a bit, allowing him to fall asleep at a decent time, and he hasn't been waking up in the middle of the night.  It's been about 3 weeks of the sleep regression phase so far.  Let's hope he passes this phase REAL soon.