Touch My Monkey

If anyone had told me BC that my son needed a lovey, I would have responded that that sort of thing would have to wait until he moved out of house and was in college.  AC, specifically, after he has decided to no longer sleep through the night, we’re trying to foist a lovey onto him pronto! 

A lovey, as we have learned is some sort of small cuddly object that in theory is supposed to help a baby sleep through the night.  It’s a small stuffed animal, pillow or blankie that, in theory, substitutes for Mom and Dad or a boob during the night. 

Although we had heard about a lovey, we I hadn’t really figured out how any particular object goes from being something cute that the baby likes to his special, favorite sleeping aid.  Conor certainly likes Douglas, a large blanket with a puppy head and tail attached, but it doesn’t seem to help him get to sleep any better.

The No Cry Sleep Solution (NCSS), though, gave some advice for making something turn into a sleep aiding lovey.  We decided to use one of Conor’s many monkeys as his official lovey.  We put a few down to see which one he preferred most, and he picked out Charlie, a sock monkey my Mom made for him.  His Paul Frank monkey named Phil came in a close second.

So according to the NCSS we needed to do a few things to help Charlie become a lovey.  I wore him in my shirt on Friday to provide Charlie an eau de Mom.  Next, upon nursing Conor to sleep, I put Charlie between Conor and me.  I was worried that Conor would be upset at a nursing interloper, but he accepted him right away, grabbing onto a stray monkey paw or tail during Friday night’s nursing.  Finally, I put Charlie beside Conor while he slept in his crib on Friday night.  Unfortunately, Friday night, Conor had a bad case of post nasal drip and a sore throat so he was soon into the big bed.  Then we had to implement another one of the NCSS’s suggestions of not letting him fall asleep on the boob.  We started consciously pulling him off when he moved from drinking to comfort sucking.  (I must confess that the hard part of this move is that now I must stay awake while he’s nursing to move him off)  It took several (10+) attempts, but he did finally go to sleep off boob.

On Saturday night, the results were much more encouraging.  While I was giving Conor his last boob before bed, Charlie accompanied us.  At some point when Conor was finished eating and was starting to comfort suck, he couldn’t decided whether my boob or Charlie’s ear was more interesting.  I put Conor down in his crib and his arm immediately wrapped around Charlie.  He did suck on his ear a bit but he wasn’t completely satisfied.  We figured out that Conor was having some major teething pain, so we popped him a dose o’ Tylenol which eventually helped him settle and sleep.  Conor woke up again Saturday night, but we had only a 12:30 and a 3:45 feeding with quick ons and offs which is a vast improvement over the previous week.  Last night was even better.  We only had one four hour stretch of sleep, but the next time he woke up, we able to get him back to sleep with back rubs than boobs.   

From the NCSS, we’ve determined that there are two main problems we have to address to achieve the prize sleep from 12 until 6 am.  And these two problems are interrelated.  Conor is eating too much at night and not eating enough during the day. 

Yesterday, when I was getting upset about this once again at lunch with Dave, I got so worked up I put a gash in my tongue.  Yes, I bit the CRAPPOLA out of my tongue and I now have a very painful gash.  It was so bad we considered having it stitched up.  But that sounded more painful than this.  I’m trying to keep my flap o’ tongue down and not to chew on that side of the mouth.   

OK.  Off to work.  We do believe we’re on the right track for helping Conor sleep through the night.  Eventually, when he’s had enough to eat, we hope that we’ll help him back to sleep first by back pats, then by words of assurance by his crib, then words near his crib to finally a full on sleep through the night. 

Off to work in cold rain. 

8:14:32 AM