frederick knoxI often brag on Knox and what a great sleeper he is, but I have recently found myself making excuses for him if he wakes up in the middle of the night.  I am beginning to wonder how much of this is normal and how much of this could be avoided if we had ever done ‘sleep training’.

At 7 weeks old Knox began “sleeping through the night” he would go 5-6 hour stretches (usually from midnight to 6am).  After nights of nursing every 2-3 hours, this felt like a miracle!  The hours gradually increased and by 3 months old he was sleeping from about 9:00pm – 6:00am (then he would nurse and go back to sleep to 8am).  Because Knox did this on his own, we never needed to ‘sleep train’, however, we have had several bumps in the road that have gotten us off course.

Traveling, which we seem to do about every other month, almost always throws Knox off a bit.  He typically will be more fussy at bedtime in a strange place and will wake up at least once at night.  This seems completely understandable and normal to me so I honestly haven’t put too much thought into it.  He easily calms back down if I come in to comfort him and nursing him puts him right back to sleep so it hasn’t ever been too much of an issue.  Growth spurts are another reason we have had regression in his sleep.  Every few months Knox goes through a growth spurt where he eats more often during the day and will also wake up during the night to eat.  As the mother of a premature baby who has consistently been in the lower percentile in size, I will happily sacrifice my sleep to make sure he is getting all the nutrition he needs to grow into a healthy baby.  So again, I have never worried about this misstep in his sleep (if you even want to call it that).  We ride it out and he is back to sleeping through the night after a few days.  At 9 months, Knox got his bottom two teeth.  He woke up crying inconsolably the night before they popped through.  He wouldn’t eat and we couldn’t console him.  I knew something was wrong and sure enough FMK noticed his new teeth the next morning.

Since we have moved to Texas, Knox has had a hard time adjusting to a new bed.  He needs to be rocked to sleep instead of playing in his bed until he falls asleep and he is waking up crying a couple times a night.  To add to his discomfort his second top tooth starting coming through this weekend so the poor baby would wake up in pain and was hard to comfort.  He did much better last night, but I am curious.  Is this normal?  What do you do to help your babies adjust to change?  How do you comfort them when they are teething?  We would love any suggestions!

*For more of Knox check out: an overdue update // starting solids // baptism // Knox at 4 months // 3 months // 1 month // welcome home