Pulling the Plug

One of the "lesser joys" of having Finn in our lives is that we're well acquainted with with stumbling through our darkened house to find out why he's crying instead of sleeping. Before the crud set in 3 months ago, he was waking up 2-3 times a night. OK, fine. Since the crud, this increased to 4-5, as he would sometimes cough himself awake or have trouble breathing easily. There was a bout of super-crud (worse than usual) 2+ weeks back, and he stepped it up to waking up 8-10 times a night! Yeah... However, by the end of that run, all it would take to put him back to sleep was sticking the pacifier back into his mouth. It was instant-back-to-sleep that rocking, patting, and bouncing could not bring. The pacifier would drop out while he slept, then when he woke up, he would wonder where it was and started wailing. Nothing else was wrong.

The solution? No more pacifier. We started on Monday and life has improved considerably. It is harder to get him to go sleep without it? Sure. But when he wakes up, we know since there is no pacifier there is nothing that WE can do to help him go to sleep. He's gotta learn on his own. And he is. His wake-ups are shorter and they're more whimper now than wail. Katie is still feeding him 3 times a night, and I change a diaper during feeding 2, but that is WAY better than 10 times. (We have been caving in on the pacifier from 4-6 a.m. because he's a terrible sleeper then, but soon we'll take that away too.) Hopefully soon we'll move to 2 feedings, and then if the crud EVER leaves, we can probably get down to 1.

It's a little know fact (well known to some) that I had a pacifier until I was X years old (actual number withheld due to embarrassment, but it is less than 5), so I'm fine with him stopping now and managing on his own. We'll see what I think on our 5 1/2 flight to Boston next week.