4 Month Wakeful

I want my baby back!

First, we dealt with a fever after his four month shots. He wasn't happy. All he wanted to do was be held and whimpered all day as his body battled a fever. Like mommy, his cheeks and ears got all red. Thankfully as soon as his fever broke the next night at 7 pm, he clearly felt better and slept a full, peaceful night.

Then last night, he woke up and wanted to play at 4 am. At first, I figured that he was hungry because his daily intake has been significantly lower than normal (after his shots). He wouldn't have anything to do with the bottle. He doesn't cry, but he made it known that he doesn't want to be alone. After an hour of trying to get him to relax and go to sleep with shush/pat, rocking, swaying, and humming, I simply put him down in his crib and laid down myself. He talked to himself quietly and I fell asleep at 5:30 am (good thing it isn't Monday, because I would be getting up and dressed to go to work at that point). Who knows when he eventually went to bed?!? He wasn't loud enough that it woke me up.

At 7 am, he was up and ready to eat, but wouldn't finish his bottle. He really, really wanted to go to sleep at 8:50 but pulled out the full on screaming, squirming, freaking out. Again, tried all the Baby Whisperer tricks. Gave up for awhile, tried again, got frustrated, tried again. Finally, after an hour of frustrating trying to get my over-tired baby to sleep, he crashed. Right now he has been asleep for one hour and nine minutes.

All the April Bumpies report that the 'four month wakeful' period hits with a vengeance so I know that this is 'normal,' but it still is really, really exhausting. I am hoping that we can continue to be consistent with our sleep routine while we go through this so that we can cover out of it (it does end right?!) without having learned any new, bad habits.