This one isn't so cute, though.
I've noticed Ryan has a tendency to do something in his sleep, and it's really been bothering me. Hopefully he won't mind me writing about this. This isn't a gripe session. It's a genuine concern.
So, I used to be the one to always get up with Aiden at night. He needed to nurse; not much Ryan could do, especially when Aiden was sleeping in our bed. But now Ryan gets up if Aiden wakes in the middle of the night. He goes in to try to get him back to sleep without nursing. Aiden often doesn't wake until about 4 or 5, at which point he demands to nurse, which is fine (if you knew how often he woke up until this past fall....). He had been waking a bit earlier lately b/c of colds and teething. Every now and then I would wake up when Ryan was also waking...but sometimes instead of him jumping out of bed to go to Aiden, like he was supposed to...he was turning OFF the monitor!!!
Seriously.
And he was totally unaware of what he was doing. Ok, so he wasn't really asleep. But he was mostly asleep and not awake enough to realize what was going on. One night recently, he was turning it off and I caught him and said something. Aiden had been crying before he turned the monitor off. I asked if he was going to check on Aiden, and he responded...but he's not crying now. Um, yeah...you don't hear him now because you turned the monitor off! He still wasn't getting it, so I just had to get up and check on Aiden, who actually had went back to sleep (probably after he realized nobody was coming to get him, poor thing.)
The problem is, this has happened more than once. And Ryan is completely unaware of what is going on. Sometimes I don't wake up when he gets up with him, not if there is little fussing and he goes right back to sleep after Ryan is in the nursery. Once I actually woke up after Aiden was crying...it took me a while to figure out what was going on, and it was because Ryan had earlier woken and turned off the monitor! I'm not sure how long Aiden had been crying before I finally woke up. Ryan was snoozing away next to me and didn't remember turning off the monitor when I asked in the morning. This was actually the first time this happened. The other times I've been lucky enough to wake up when he was turning off the monitor.
Some of you might think..no big deal. Aiden will go back to sleep on his own after a while anyway. Well, that's not how we roll. We don't do things like that. When Ryan is awake and we talk about this the next day, he doesn't like it, either. He is just completely out of it when it happens. We're worried that something could happen where Aiden does need us and we can't hear him. Surely I would wake with enough crying. But really, I'm a deep sleeper once I'm out. I keep that monitor turned way up!
*Sigh* Not sure if there is anything much to do. The monitor is kept right at our heads, and I have been putting it closer to my side than in the middle. Of course, the last few nights, Aiden's been sleeping until 4 or later, which helps. But it's still a concern.
3 comments:
Sounds like you might need to get a second monitor and keep it far away from Ryan! In our days of frequent waking, Sean would say the meanest things in his sleep. I'm a VERY light sleeper so I'm up and awake at the slightest cry, while Sean could sleep through it. I would sometimes be calling him through the monitor to come help me for 20 minutes and he just never came. I had been known to use my feet to wake him while holding Colin in my arms. He called it kicking him I called it using what I had available! Sometimes I would say, "Do you want to change his diaper before I feed him?" and he would respond "NO! Who wants to change a diaper?!" I would get SO PISSED but he would have absolutely no memory of it the next day. We still laugh about how MEAN we were to each other in the middle of the night. Thank GOD we are beyond that now. I have actually had to turn the monitor off because Colin makes a lot of noise in his sleep (likely why we got into such a bad pattern, he wasn't always awake when I tended to him as an infant) and every little sounds wakes me up. His room shares a wall with ours so when he cries I hear him without the monitor. This may change when we turn on the AC in the summer. Otherwise I would just mail you my monitor!
Hi Daisy! My oldest daughter, Emma, who is almost Ryan's age, does this type of quasi sleep walking and I can almost always predict when she's going to do it. Over and over again it has occurred when she hasn't had enough rest. She's just the type of kid that needs a lot of uninterrupted sleep. She will walk into our room in the middle of the night and talk to me, get into bed with me, or she has even gone and checked her homework in her backpack! The next morning she won't remember a word and she'll get pretty hostile about it - I guess she thinks we are making fun of her or making it up? I don't know, I can't get a handle that aspect. Maybe just by the virtue of sleep walking she didn't receive the type of deep sleep that she needs in order to behave properly. She works really hard at school and is really tired at the end of day. I can't imagine what kind of mess she would be if I required her to get up in the middle of the night with her little sisters. I think she would probably hurt them or me for asking her to do it. Good luck. Ah, to have had boys! I'm jealous.
Yes, this is definitely a sign of sleep deprivation for Ryan! The funny thing is...I need more sleep than he does! Much more. But it affects him in more obvious ways. One day he said something about how I can handle it so well. Ha. I'm thinking...It's not that I can handle it so well. I just get over it b/c I can't take the time to not handle it!
Becky..Ryan can be mean at night, too, sometimes. Ugh. So frustrating. He just gets so impatient sometimes when Aiden doesn't go right back to sleep. Not always...sometimes he's great. It's just b/c he's so tired and is more focused on what HE wants versus what Aiden needs. He has a hard time being sympathetic sometimes at 4am... I get that. The other morning I was mad about it, but this is after 18 months of no sleep. Ryan's just recently dealing with it more when we do the sleep training. When Aiden came to our bed and nursed and stayed with us...Ryan was asleep the whole time. Ha.
Starr - Ryan definitely does some wild things when he's not getting enough sleep! When Aiden was first born and sleeping in the bassinet in our room, Ryan would wake to bring him to me b/c I was still recovering from the c-section. But after maybe a week, I had to tell him to just stay in bed b/c he was acting so strange! I was afraid he might accidentally do something that could hurt the baby. Sometimes it's just easier to do it by myself...... Not that he doesn't try to help. And sometimes I certainly need it!! Like now...after me being sleep deprived for so long! ;)
Good news is he's doing better lately. AND the other night, it was my turn to get up during the waking (we're trying to have Aiden sleep through his 4/5am nursing and not nurse until time to get up...it's wearing on all of us b/c Aiden is NOT sleeping well during it). Anyway...my turn to get up this time, and I was having some strange dream when he started crying...and almost turned the monitor off myself! Haha! I've never done that.... I was pretty out of it, but I did catch myself.
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