Of late, when it comes to Piglet, my blog seems to revolve solely around his sleep routine. He does lots of funny, and cool stuff I swear but when I sit down to blog about Piglet, the only thought that comes to this heavily sleep-deprived mom is sleep.
A brief history of our struggles to get him to a sleep routine are documented here and here.
Actually I need to correct myself. Piglet does have a sleep routine, and once he’s down for the night, he stays down till morning. The only issue is that Piglet’s sleep routine just doesn’t work for us. He is awake long past everyone’s sleep times…on a good day he sleeps by half-past ten, on other days, it is close to or past midnight, leaving both K and I starting our early working days feeling lethargic and crabby. You really don’t want to be talking to me unless it is past 11:00 am and I have at least 2 cups of tea emptied into me.
Anyway, enough cribbing and on to the latest developments on Piglet’s sleep routine.
In my last sleep post, I mentioned about Piglet chewing on cloth and how we were trying to wean him off this bad habit. Well, that effort was a thumping success, though not in the way we expected.
In the past couple of weeks, Piglet voluntarily changed up his sleep routine. He no longer needs his blankie and he no longer want to fall asleep on my lap.
What he does look for is something to hug and that something has turned out to be K’s head.
Now, I continue patting his bottom, while K allows him to hug his head and nod off. I am all gung-ho about this development because it means less patting/singing time for me, but poor K is bearing the brunt of Piglet’s love. He doesn’t let go of K’s head until he is in deep sleep, and this insane position has left K with a sprained neck.
To add to K’s misery, Piglet uses his shoulder as a teether ignoring the perfectly lovely teethers we have for him. All children love Sophie the giraffe, it seems, if I go by the product reviews online. Piglet is the only one that loathes her. But Piglet doesn’t have much time for girls these days anyway, he’s a man’s man (fodder for another blog post on some other sleepless night).
Since Piglet is so comfortable with this routine, K is too scared to change it up as Piglet throws a fit if K doesn’t let him hold his head on demand.
So for now, K has accepted to be the sacrificial lamb until we can slowly direct Piglet’s attention to something more suitable, and probably something that doesn’t feel pain? Hopefully, we get there soon before K’s patience runs out.
My son also uses his daddy’s shoulder as teether, to soothe his anxiety / discomfort.
@Reema: haha, good to know. Will let K know so that he can console himself that he’s not the only one 🙂
I know it is rude and K is surely going to hate this comment, but that is such a cute picture, the lil one hugging his dad’s head real tight when going to sleep 🙂
Hope you are able to get your little one on a routine. I have had pretty good success with my 4 kiddos using the framework of Baby Wise. I wrote a post about it on my blog, hope it helps!
For us, it was a Fisher Price projector that worked with my daughter. My son has transferred nicely into the bed – much better than I thought he would, but I did buy a second projector just in case. We have the opposite problem than you where my son goes to bed super early, so while he may sleep a good stretch, it doesn’t feel like it because we’ve gone to bed in the middle of his long run. No book is ever completely correct, huh?
You probably aren’t looking for advice, but I’ll let you know which book ended up working for us. The Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby was informative and helpful. Hopefully, though, you’ll find something before K’s neck finds its limit. Good luck!
PS – I cannot imagine how that scenario looks, falling asleep while holding on to a head.