Boo for bananas!
We've met the enemy and . . . it's a banana? Well, it just might be the enemy of Riley's sleep anyway.
Riley has been a pretty good sleeper since he was about 2 months old, sleeping 11 hours at night with only a few minor wake-ups that could be easily pacified (literally -- thank god for pacifiers!). Then during the holidays he turned into a maniac at night. He would wake every hour, howl with great distress and pound his heels into his crib over and over as if madly protesting the fact that he was in bed. What happened to our good sleeper?
Then suddenly everything changed. For three nights in a row he slept through the night without hardly a peep.
And then on the fourth night the maniac returned. That night was so awful that at one point it took me an hour and a half of holding, rocking and soothing to get him to fall back asleep. With a raging cold that really deserved a long night of sleep, I instead got four hours of disjointed shut eye. I was feeling pretty desperate the next day.
That's when Andy came up with a theory. He noted that the terrible sleep during the holidays correlated with our introduction of solid foods. When, for three days, we stopped feeding him solids, he slept like a baby, so to speak. Then as soon as we gave him bananas, he went bonkers again. Andy suggested we cut out all solids but rice cereal and see if it affected his sleep.
And ya know what? It worked. Riley immediately started sleeping better than he ever has before: up to twelve hours a night without a single wake up. Of course I still get up several times a night just to make sure he's still breathing! But I'm sleeping so much better; we all are.
It looks like the boy (and his fragile digestive system) is just not ready to get crazy with the Cheez Whiz yet. We'll try again next month. Until then, we'll enjoy our zzzzs!
Riley has been a pretty good sleeper since he was about 2 months old, sleeping 11 hours at night with only a few minor wake-ups that could be easily pacified (literally -- thank god for pacifiers!). Then during the holidays he turned into a maniac at night. He would wake every hour, howl with great distress and pound his heels into his crib over and over as if madly protesting the fact that he was in bed. What happened to our good sleeper?
Then suddenly everything changed. For three nights in a row he slept through the night without hardly a peep.
And then on the fourth night the maniac returned. That night was so awful that at one point it took me an hour and a half of holding, rocking and soothing to get him to fall back asleep. With a raging cold that really deserved a long night of sleep, I instead got four hours of disjointed shut eye. I was feeling pretty desperate the next day.
That's when Andy came up with a theory. He noted that the terrible sleep during the holidays correlated with our introduction of solid foods. When, for three days, we stopped feeding him solids, he slept like a baby, so to speak. Then as soon as we gave him bananas, he went bonkers again. Andy suggested we cut out all solids but rice cereal and see if it affected his sleep.
And ya know what? It worked. Riley immediately started sleeping better than he ever has before: up to twelve hours a night without a single wake up. Of course I still get up several times a night just to make sure he's still breathing! But I'm sleeping so much better; we all are.
It looks like the boy (and his fragile digestive system) is just not ready to get crazy with the Cheez Whiz yet. We'll try again next month. Until then, we'll enjoy our zzzzs!
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