sleep

Sleep is such a hot commodity for any parent with young children, but man, we have really been struggling for over a year.  Shortly after Olivia was born, Nolan, our formally amazing sleeper, began to have some serious difficulty with going to sleep and waking insanely early.  For a few months, we moved him back downstairs into his old crib, and sat with him for sometimes 2+ hours every night until he would fall asleep.  Any other manner of putting him to sleep would result in severe anxiety.  Once asleep, he would wake for the day anywhere between 3 and 4:30 in the morning and would NOT go back to sleep, no matter what we tried.  He was wide awake, ready and raring to go, despite his groggy, miserable parents.  

Over the course of the last year, we have gotten him to go to bed much easier, mostly with the help of melatonin, per the advice of his pediatrician.  He is sleeping upstairs in his bed, but is still waking VERY, VERY early in the morning, despite the many techniques we have tried.  We have been wondering lately if he is waking especially early on particularly stressful days.  With his tendency toward being anxious, I decided to take the recommendation of some friends and get him a weighted blanket.  But, when I started to look, I realized they were $150+, and we just don't have that kind of money for something that we didn't know would work.  I decided to make one.  Nolan's been asking me lately to make him a special blanket anyway, so I figured this was a good opportunity.  We made it out of flannel and minky fleece, and it is filled with plastic pellets and weighs about 8lbs.  We added a satin binding to the edges to make it even more appealing to our tactile guy.  He loves it and thinks it's really cool to hide under it, but so far it hasn't made a meaningful difference in his wake up time.  I'm crossing my fingers that it may still help now that we're back from Eau Claire and are back in our routine.