The Great Sleep Experiment - Part 1

It's 1AM - Who wants to play!

It is no secret that Tom is a problem sleeper. As a newborn he could sense when my head hit the pillow or when I removed my glasses to go to sleep; he immediately woke up. It was agony. He couldn't fall asleep and he couldn't stay asleep. I was a zombie.

A tiny Tommy

Tom ended up sleeping in our bed so we could get any sleep at all. Even the cosleeper attached to our bed  didn't work. He needed to be with us to sleep for any length of time. We would start him in the cosleeper but we could never get him to go back to sleep once he woke up.

He also had five vitrectomy surgeries during his first six months of life. That is a lot of stress on an infant. So not only was he always recovering from a surgery during that time, he was also wearing an eye shield to protect his post-surgical eye. These shields are worn for about two weeks post surgery while the eye heals. You don't want little fingers pulling the shield off and rubbing the eye. That was another reason to keep him in our bed; so we could hear if he started trying to rip off his eye shield.

Wearing an eye shield

Around the time Thomas was having all these surgeries (monthly 1/10, 2/10, 3/10), he started to refuse feeds. He fell off the growth chart and was diagnosed with failure to thrive that spring; feeding became our new battle. This also kept him in the weight range of using the cosleeper and kept him in our room.

By the fall of 2010, we decided that it was time to get a g-tube during his next scheduled EUA (an eye exam under anesthesia) so we could be sure Tom was getting adequate nutrition. It was a hard choice but it was great to see him full and getting pudgy. It's so sad to see a skinny baby.

However, the g-tube also interfered with Tom's gag reflex. He became a puker! If he got too upset he threw up. During this time his eye was stable and he was finally feeling happy and full. I started trying to follow the steps for getting a baby to sleep in his own bed. We would stay in the room with him to console him as he feel asleep. Unfortunately he never calmed down. He didn't cry for 15 minutes and then fall asleep - he wailed until he threw up. And where do you go from there? We just cleaned him up and put into our bed.

Then in January of 2011, Tom's glaucoma pressures got too high and surgical intervention was needed. It took about six months, three surgeries and five EUA's to get the pressure under control. So it was more patching and more recovery for a child that was older and stronger.

As Tom turned two in September of 2011, he was chubby and happy. His eyes were stable and under control. We had finally hit a patch of calm. This December I decided it was time to work on sleep!