Hi all~
Our son had spoiled us with five-hour stretches of sleep, or even better, just slept through the night. No diaper changes, no feedings, nothing. Now, with the onset of teething (and yes, I know this is contributing to the problem), he's a hellion. Up every two or three hours, loud screaming and crying, and DEMANDING to be fed. If we give him a bottle, it has to have a boob chaser. If we start with the boob, he demands a bottle right after. His "screaming and crying" is this high-pitched, shrill growl, that turns into a scream, that I swear was designed to drill straight into my brain and make it explode.
Our routine is, let him play all day. He's home with his dad, so I know they tumble and roughhouse and he's definitely tired out. Gets a combo of formula during the day (workplace issues, let's not go there) and breast milk when I get home at night. Solids throughout the day. Bath, pajamas and nighttime lotion rubdown, couple stories, then crib. We've ended cosleeping because he needed too much space and none of us were sleeping well. After we switched to the crib, life was peachy. No fight there. That's where we got spoiled.
Now, once we get him in the crib, he's down 20-30 min before the shrieking starts. We've tried teething gels, iced teething rings, infant Tylenol, solids late, solids early, formula late or early, a white noise machine, cooler room, warmer room, etc etc soforth. You get the idea. We still get two to three hour blocks, and it's miserable. He spoiled us before, and now we don't know what to do to help him sleep in a full stretch. His interrupted sleep doesn't seem to bother him during the day, but it's killing me and DH. The only thing we've tried that works consistently is putting him in the car for a drive, but we live in Michigan. There will come a point where I will not take him out in subzero weather to drive on frozen roads in the hopes he stops crying and goes to sleep.
We don't do CIO. I want to get away from feeding him at night (which may mean, figuring out how to give him more during the day? When he doesn't want to eat, he just DOESN'T eat), and I want him to sleep at least a six-to-eight hour stretch. I want his teeth to not be the problem here, because he's got a LOT of teeth yet to come in. Any ideas?
