I did NOT have a sleeping-problem. I had NOT inherited the bad sleeping habits of my parents. I was NOT teething. The change of season was NOT effecting my sleep-pattern. Then what? Well, I was simply the offer of bad habits of my parents. The fault was theirs, not mine (although they did what they thought was best for me, not knowing better). But the important thing is not to look for the guilty ones (yeah, you can see that my mum lends me her fingers to write this) but that things have actually improved. I sleep well both during the day and during the night.
So in one day the pattern changed from waking up 2-6 times a night -as I've done the last few weeks- to sleeping 11 hours without interruption with the great bonus that I fall asleep by myself now -something that my parents have been hoping that would happen for some time -but dind't know that I had it all in me, all I needed was the opportunity to try. Needless to say my parents are on cloud nine and I'm blissfully happy myself. Of course it means also that I have said goodbye to my fairy for the last time (we hope). I miss her a little bit, but hey, one has to go on with his life, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to visit me forever.
I can hear you asking what the trick was. Well, imagine going to sleep in your bed as every night; after a few hours you wake up finding yourself on the sofa in the living room. Wouldn't you be terrified? Even an adult would start screaming not knowing which supernatural force had moved him at night. Then imagine a baby falling asleep either in the arms of the parents, or even while breasfeeding, and then wakes up in a bed (even if it is its bed) without the parents around. It never failed to scare me I tell you...! So I'm sure you'll find it normal that I called my mum, which would arrive, terribly tired, nurse me and then put me to bed. If I wasn't completely asleep, I would start to complain the moment I was put back to bed, my mum would take me in her arms again, I would calm down...and so the night would pass with neither of us getting good sleep. But how did we get out of this vicious circle?
Welll, on friday my mum when to sign me in to the daycare. She arrived at the moment that the kindergarten-teachers were putting the babies to sleep. My mum sighed and asked how could they make all these babies fall asleep when she had this great problem with me. The teacher let my mum talk for a while -she was a very good listener-and then she suggested a solution. Previously my mum had talked to my doctor and to the psicologist that had given the prenatal-course, but neither of them had listened and neither of them could point out a solution. The doctor had actually suggested that my parents give me camomille-tea when I wake up at night ("for he is probably just a bit thirsty!") and the psicologist had said that some babies do and some babies don't have a problem like this. Both of them said that it would pass, although no-one could give a guarantee of WHEN. But the teacher, who is used to look in the eye of tired parents (my mum had slept only 2.5 hours the previous night) knew what she was doing. She suggested a book called "Fate la nanna" written by a Spanish sleep-expert called Estevill and said that many parents had solved the problem using the method described in the book. My mum was enthusiastic to say the least. She ran home, breastfed me and then we were off to the center where she stormed the bookstore and bought the book. Then we went straight home where I was put to play by myself while she practically ate the book. That same night she put in practice the method described by the book with the results that after two minutes of crying I fell asleep by myself before 9 o'clock and I slept until 8 the next morning. For weeks and weeks we had been TWO MISERABLE MINUTES OF CRYING FROM A GOOD NIGHT SLEEP! My mum was so excited during the night that she didn't sleep at all, she kept saying to her self IT WORKS, IT WORKS and her blood was full of adrenaline.
Maybe it's still early to say that I'm a good sleeper, but the trend has been turned with great consequences on both me and my parents. I'm more relaxed during the day, they are more relaxed and we all have more fun than before. Life is simply GOOD
P.S.
On the picture above you can see how I fell asleep in my bed yesterday afternoon (I slept 2 hours, which was very rare the last few weeks), lying sideways in the bed, hugging Yogi the bear.
