Success!

Well we did it.  We got some fucking sleep. Hallelujah!  I haven't been game to blog about it for fear of jinxing myself, but what the hell?  Can't be any worse than the last couple of weeks that we had.  This morning I even put the Mushroom down and he was semi awake and he just drifted off by himself.  Bloody brilliant!

Here's the part where I admit that I was stupid and should have listened to my mother. And my sister.  And numerous other people.  Swaddling was the key.  I had tried it previously but to no avail.  The screaming, grunting tantrum when I tried to swaddle him was enough to put anyone off.  In desperation, and exhaustion, on Thursday night I thought I'd try again.  Ok that's not exactly true.  I was bouncing a screaming Mushroom up and down, around and around, shhing and carrying on for over an hour and I decided to google how to calm an overtired baby... and what do you know?  Swaddling came up.  I thought there's no way, until I saw this you tube video and this one both using that miracle blanket thing and they stopped crying almost instantly.  Instantly people!  

Now I don't have a miracle blanket.  I do, however, have muslin, and I'm creative, and more importantly, I'm desperate, so I'll try to I do a homemade version of that.  I mean if it's that easy to make him stop crying then I'm in.  After some pretty ridiculous attempts, a screaming protestation and  20 minutes later, Mushroom admitted defeat.  Swaddled, he was a different Mushroom.  He was calm, warm and cuddly, and more importantly, not screaming.  I fed him all wrapped up tight then put him down to sleep, no hysterics, nothing.  Just quiet, deep sleep.  No shit.  I almost cried with relief.  I had a lovely, long, hot shower and got into bed and enjoyed over 5 wonderful hours of unbroken sleep. Little bloody champion.

Friday afternoon things went downhill but I also came to the realisation that my little man gets overtired very quickly and needs to be sleeping much, much more.  He was still catching up on all the hours he missed and was being decidedly unco-operative all afternoon.  I guess I just thought that if he was tired, he would go to sleep.. douche.  Baby's need to be settled to get to sleep and because he was so overtired, he wasn't settling, therefore he wasn't sleeping.  I just had to get him to calm down enough to get some good slepep and then be a better Mummy at making him go to sleep more often!

Unfortunately we had Juffin's work Christmas BBQ on Friday night so not great timing but you have to do these things.  We ventured out hoping that someone would fall asleep in the car... denied.  We then tried rocking, wrapping, and pushing in the pram.  Again denied.  I mean he wasn't a holy terror, just grizzly crying and general discontentedness, not screaming the house down unhappiness.  The Mushroom just didn't want to be put down in his pram, he just wanted heaps of cuddles, whilst nearly yawning his face off and continuing to fight sleep.  In the end I sat in the car breastfeeding for most of the evening which was tremendous fun.

After that, I decided that I was going to try to get into some sort of a routine and make sure that he was getting lots of good sleep, because at that time, he obviously wasn't!  Unfortunately that meant that rest of our social plans for the weekend went out the window but for our sanity, and Mushroom's wellbeing, it had to done!  We have now established a bedtime routine, play, bath, songs and cuddles, feed, sleep.  And it's working!  The Mushroom is drifting off to sleep alone and settling himself and, the best part, is going straight back to sleep after his 1.30am feed!!!  I'm so happy I could die.  Seriously.

All of you cross your fingers and toes for us that the good sleeping continues!

Mushroom Burrito anyone?!  

Next time:  Poo, poo, and more bloody poo!