The Mystery of Baby Sleep

Unicorn community. Kristen here after a four month (non-intentional, life-induced) hiatus from posting. I’m reaching out today in need of wisdom, affirmation, perspective, validation, and virtual hugs all about baby’s challenges with sleep.

Sleeping like a perfect angel…during a nap. Not the same child at nighttime.

Baby has struggled with sleeping through the night since early May. There are a million and a half factors contributing to his sleeplessness (the most important probably just being that he’s, well, just a baby). I want to review all of the factors with you all so that you can have the full context for what we’ve been going through. It would be super helpful if you could read through the post before giving me your thoughts. I’ll summarize everything in bullet points at the bottom!

Baby slept through the night like a little angel from 3 months old to 6 months old. Bath time, lotion, jammies, story time. Put down in his crib awake around 7 PM. Lights out. Baby asleep without tears in a matter of minutes. He would sleep through the night straight until 6 AM. Such a beautiful time in our lives as parents. A full night’s sleep was just so damn delicious.

And then everything changed, practically overnight. Like everything changed…our living situation… his sleep…and then eventually his little baby body. We had to move out from our home suddenly after water damage destroyed ceiling and floors just weeks prior to getting our house on the market.

Water damage insanity. Can you see where the water pooled in the ceiling of the dining room?

We moved up north to my family’s vacant duplex until we could fix our home, sell it, and buy a new place. This all went down at the end of April. As you might expect, baby’s sleep completely crashed and burned in the new house. He went from sleeping through the night to waking up 4-5 times, which felt completely understandable since we were in a new place. Environment is such an important part of a baby’s sleep.

These frequent night wakings continued all through May and into June. Then in mid-June, baby had surgery to correct his bilateral dislocated hips. This surgery was majorly invasive. His surgeon had to open up both hip joints via 2-3 inch incisions in the little creases where his leg meets his torso. If you think about it, 2-3 inches is GINORMOUS on a baby body. I was shocked to see how big the scars were when he eventually came out of his cast. After this surgery, baby was in a full body cast, from just below his nipples all the way to his ankles, for three months.

After baby’s hip surgery in mid-June 2020. He stayed overnight in the hospital for 2 nights.

Puffy-faced post-surgery. Gah, it’s so hard to see your baby suffer.

It’s no surprise that his sleep was even further disrupted by his body cast. The first week after his surgery was hell. He barely slept at all. He cried throughout the night. He only slept in on his tummy on our chest or lying tummy down on a bean bag (100% supervised, of course).

Let’s also add worsening acid reflux to the mix. He coughed and throat-cleared all day and night. Woke up screaming because of the burning sensation. We had to get a modified barium swallow study (MBSS) - like a swallow video x-ray - at Children’s Hospital to rule out any anatomical abnormalities in his esophagus that could have been contributing to his reflux (conclusion: normal swallow, normal anatomy!).

A few weeks after his surgery, baby’s sleep started to improve slightly. He started to be able to sleep on his back in a soft, cozy bed (he refused to sleep on his harder crib mattress). Since he was unable to move as a cute baby paper weight, we felt safe with him sleeping on the guest room queen sized bed while he was in his cast.

For awhile, I tried sleeping in the master bedroom with Cory and just monitoring baby on the baby camera while he slept in the other room. The problem was, when baby woke up crying in the middle of the night, Cory also woke up and then had a really hard time falling back asleep because of his wicked tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Not getting adequate sleep makes his tinnitus even worse the next day, so you can see why it’s super important for us to make sure Cory gets enough sleep at night.

Our solution? I slept with baby in the guest room so that when he woke up in the middle of the night, I was nearby to intervene before Cory heard him and woke up too. Consequently, Cory and I haven’t slept in the same bed since April. Not ideal and not what any married couple hopes for…but sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. (Can anyone else relate to this sentiment?)

All during his time in his body cast, baby slept GREAT during the day for the most part. He fell asleep on his own for naps without protest. He took three naps a day that ranged from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Most nights, he fell asleep on his own - unless he was overtired, and then we would walk him to sleep.

The challenge wasn’t with daytime sleep or falling asleep. It was with staying asleep during the middle of the night. I tried to accept the fact that he was a baby, growing, teething, tooting, and still needing to nurse, and that I should just take a chill pill. Night wakings should be expected for a baby his age. (This is what I tried to get myself to believe.)

In early September, baby finally got out of his body cast! The first few days after he got out of his cast were really rough. His muscles were very sore/stiff form being in the same position for three months. His slept declined as he got used to his cast-less body and new brace. He’ll now be in this brace full-time until December, but thankfully we can remove the brace while in the bath, carseat, and high chair. Then he’ll be in the brace part-time for another three months.

Baby in his new brace - super flexible!

That brings us to today. Baby has been out of his body cast and in his new brace for just about a month. He’s able to move a bit more in the brace than in the cast. He can scoot up in bed when lying flat. He can spin around on his tummy on the hardwood floor. He can wiggle and twist during diaper changes. His mobility is still limited - he can’t roll over, crawl, stand, or walk yet. But he’s moving enough now that we are worried about him rolling of the queen sized bed that he’s grown so accustomed to.

For the first few days after getting out of his cast, we attempted having him sleep in his crib in our room again. He would occasionally take a good nap in the crib, but he hated it at nighttime. He protested when we put him down in it awake at bedtime. We didn’t feel comfortable taking a sleep training approach, letting him cry for a specified duration until we went in to soothe him until he fell asleep on his own, because we weren’t sure if his tears were due to any muscle pain. We preferred to err on the side of caution and assume he was crying because of discomfort. We weren’t willing to take the risk of letting him cry just in case it was at all related to his hips. When we picked him up and walked him to sleep, he wouldn’t let us put him back in the crib. Just as soon as we leaned down to place him gently in the crib, his eyelids shot opened to survey his surroundings. Even if he had been asleep in our arms for 10 minutes, he’d sense that we were putting him down and wake up immediately. Babies are crazy smart.

After the crib trial failed, we quickly assumed our original sleeping positions: Kristen and baby in the guest room. Cory in the master. We knew we didn’t want this to last forever, but we were going to be moving into our new house in a couple weeks, and we figured it wasn’t worth trying any sleep training if we were just going to be changing environments soon anyway.

All of this felt doable in the short term…until four nights ago. Four nights ago, when baby woke up in the middle of the night at his usual times (9 PM, 1 AM, 3 AM), he would wake up screaming, inconsolable, like he was in the worst pain ever or like he was possessed by the devil himself! Previously, when he woke up, he would cry for a few seconds until I soothed him with my voice or started nursing him. For the past few nights, he wakes up screaming crying, and I can’t get him to snap out of his wailing for 5-10 minutes. Nursing doesn’t help. My voice doesn’t help. Walking him around doesn’t help. He’s in this weird half-awake, half-asleep state. The only way I have been able to get him to calm down is by turning on all the lights, turning on music, and/or playing YouTube cartoons. Once he’s fully awake, he’s smiley and just fine. No grimacing. No pain. Nothing. It all vanishes. Once he’s calmed down, it takes another 30 minutes of me or Cory walking him around to get him to fall back asleep.

Last night, he woke up screaming at 9:30, 10:30, 1:15, 3, 4:30, and then finally at 6:30. This feels insane. I have no idea what’s going on. I know, of course, that I’m contributing to his night wakings since we co-sleep and I have been soothing him back to sleep the past few months. I know that these night wakings will continue until he sleeps in his crib by himself and we have a more consistent approach to intervening with his wakings. I know this will get better once we move into the new house and start being more consistent like we were able to do when he was younger. I also know this will get better when he gets out of his brace and can reposition himself in the middle of the night.

But this screaming…this inconsolable-ness. I am befuddled by it. Where did it come from all of a sudden? Is it ever going to go away? Have any of you ever experienced anything like this?

To summarize:

• Baby slept through the night like an angel from 3-6 months after we implemented The Happy Sleeper approach.

• Baby’s nighttime sleeping declined after we moved into the new house (end of April) and due to being in a body cast (June-September). He woke up 3-4x/night and required assistance to fall back asleep each time.

• Baby didn’t sleep well in his crib when in his body cast. He consistently slept much better when in a bed propped on a soft pillow.

• Ever since being in his body cast, baby and I have slept together in the guest bed. He no longer self-soothes in the middle of the night. I’m right there with him, and we do a lot of dream-feeding. Not ideal, I know. Just what seems to have worked.

• Baby’s daytime sleeping has stayed relatively stable/good over the past four months. Falls asleep on his own for nap times. Gets enough daytime sleep (~3 hours of naps/day).

• Other factors: teething, acid reflux, normal/expected physical and cognitive development impacting sleep

Okay, folks. My main question relates to his current screaming and inconsolableness during nighttime wakings. What the heck? Have you ever experienced this? What is happening, and what can I do?!

Please comment below, email me, or comment on Facebook/Instagram. Thank you!!!