Plan Q

Getting Justin on a normal sleep pattern has been a freaking nightmare. He slept like an angel for the first 3 weeks of his life and then after that it's all been downhill from there.

At first he'd wake up multiple times for feedings and when we finally got that straightened out, he'd wake up for only one feeding but then he'd stay up for an hour or two. Eventually that one worked itself out, but then he started waking up earlier and earlier every day.

At first I hoped it would work itself out, of course it didn't so I needed to get creative. We tried keeping him up past his self imposed bedtime of 6:30 or 7pm, yeah that worked great. We kept him up until 9 and he'd still get up between 6 & 7am. Naptime has always been a joke he'll take up to 3 naps a day, and they only last for about 45 minutes each! I tried cutting out his morning nap so he'd take only one long nap in the afternoon. After two days of screaming for his morning nap I finally caved and gave him his morning nap. So I thought maybe I'd keep him up longer so his afternoon nap would run later in the day so he'd be able to stay awake later than 7pm. Again that didn't work either. His nap was about an hour now, but he'd still wake up at the ass crack of dawn. Finally, I decided screw it, I'll just let him sleep whenever he wants. I'm just going to have to get used to waking up before the sun everyday for the rest of my life.

That's when Plan Q popped into my brilliant mind. I thought maybe he wasn't sleeping long in the morning was because it was too bright in his room with the sun starting to come up. And I also thought that could be the reason he would take 2-3 naps that only lasted about 45 min each, it was just too damn bright in his room with the sun. There are mini blinds in the room but those are about as effective as keeping out sunlight as they would be for stopping bullets. So I got very creative found a bunch of blankets and hung them up in front of the windows.

Hoping that these would actually work I put him down for his afternoon nap and he slept for almost 3 hours. And again yesterday his nap lasted 3 hours! Since he took such great naps he's been a much happier baby and he's been able to stay up until 8pm. The best news of all though (are you ready, I hope you're sitting down), yesterday morning he slept until 8, which is unheard of in this house. And right now it is 8:45 and he's still sleeping! Which that's so incridble I think I'm going to go out and buy a lottery ticket and really press my luck!

I hope Plan Q actually works because I'm quickly running out of letters in the alphabet, next I'm going to have to move to the Greek alphabet.