Sleepless Nights

Last night the neighbor's kids were running around at midnight and woke Jude up. He cried for a bit, then started screaming at the top of his lungs. Jay went to get him and brought him to bed with us because we are afraid that the neighbors will decide to be vengeful and call the courtesy officer. Jude didn't fall back to sleep until after 4am and he was wide awake and ready to go at 7am. The same thing happened on Monday.

In the past, we would let him cry, then after five minutes we'd check on him. If he was still crying (which, of course, he always was) we'd wait 10 minutes then check on him agian. Then we'd wait 15 minutes and check on him again, adding five minutes each time. All the books said that works. Well, it didn't work. We tried letting him sleep with us. That worked until I stopped nursing him. Now any time he's in bed with us he just wants to play. We tried all the things the books and friends recommended. The only thing that seemed to work was letting him cry until he fell asleep.

He's been sleeping through the night since he was about 7-9 months old. Sure he'll wake up and cry for a second or two here and there, but he's always able to get back to sleep on his own quickly. Now that we have inconsiderate upstairs neighbors, he doesn't sleep through the night. I think we've brought him to bed with us four or five times since we moved here.

This solution isn't working for me. Jay sleeps in another room since he functions so poorly on little sleep. I have no problem with this since I have opportunities to nap during the day and Jay doesn't. We are regressing to the days of Jude being a newborn. I don't like it. I prefer to sleep in bed with Jay (even when he snores). If Jude would just sleep when we bring him to bed with us there would be no problem. An even better solution would be our neighbors keeping their kids under control and getting them to bed at a decent hour.