Tiny Boy's Behavioral Modification Plan

So...now that Tiny Boy is generally sleeping better DURING the night (he's waking up 1-2 times, instead of 2-5, and going back to sleep easily), the drama at bedtime has gone up exponentially.

We went back to the sleep clinic today.  New plan is to keep him on iron (he had a blood draw today), prilosec, and add melatonin an hour before bedtime.  I'm not sure how long they'll keep him on the melatonin (we go back in about a month) but I'm guessing it will work like a charm.

I've used a very tiny amount (about 0.2 mg) with moderate success.  They're putting him on 1 mg.

And if that doesn't work, there's always this book which must work by way of some version of hypnotism.  Either way, I feel fairly certain Tiny Boy at age 4 will be sleeping much better than Tiny Boy ages 1-3.5.

And me?  Knock wood and all that hocus pocus, I'm getting about 8 hours these days, which is simply divine...

Woe the Return of the Old Tiny Boy

Two nights in a row he's woken and come to my bed early and thrashed.

Which is why we stopped co-sleeping a while ago.

He took a long time to go to bed last night, and hten he woke early, and somehow he'd actually pooped in his pullup (he hasn't NOT used the toilet in more than 18 months).  So something was amiss.

I hope to go back to the new Tiny Boy soon...

That Whole Sleep Begets Sleep Thing

So other than one night (when I didn't give him melatonin) that involved a 2 hour bedtime crazy session....Tiny Boy has been doing really well.

He goes to bed within a reasonable time frame.

He wakes generally once, and usually that's coming about 4:00 am.  He does call me, and I can't get him to stop doing that, but as soon as he settles in my bed, we're both back out.

Yesterday he said he was tired around 3:00 in the afternoon....  had an early bedtime of 7:15ish and he wasn't up until 8:00 this morning, when I woke him!!!  Uhh????

Week #2

So it's been more than a week of The Plan, including a trip that required changing time zones and sleeping in a trundle bed.

The Plan, as you'll recall involved a combo of medical and behavioral tinkering:

• iron supplementation (30 mg/daily)
• prilosec
• new sippy cup for night

The upshot of all this is he is eating like a fiend, so I'm not sure if he really wasn't feeling great before or what (he was taking in only 50ish calories/night, so that's not a major loss), and only waking once in the middle of the night, generally in the 3-5 window, at which point he's coming into my bed (he's asking me to sit in the rocking chair, and that is not going to happen).

So this is pretty excellent.  Not perfect, but reasonable.