A Perfect Kid with a Sleep Disorder

This is the only explanation. We've lived with this person for two years and a little over three months now. I know what he is like. Braden has been one of the easiest kids to raise that anyone could hope for during the daylight hours. But after dark he can be difficult.

Braden gave up his bottle cold turkey at 12 months. No trouble at all. Not one crying fit over his bottle. His pacifier went in the same exact way shortly after that. Braden has always been a good eater. That is part of the reason he got of the bottle so quick. He likes food. He loves fruits and veggies and will never turn them down. He loves milk and water, and drinks them almost exclusively.

But his greatness does not only revolve around food. At the ripe old age of two he has 80% mastered potty training in only a few short months. His terrible twos tantrums only lasted a short while. He always says please and thank you without prompting. If he so much as bumps into you he will offer a sorry.

This is daytime Braden. He is a sweet, loving, good mannered angel.

Night time Braden is a different story. He has been difficult from the very beginning. Arica and I spent months sleeping on the couch while he slept in his swing as an infant. We both took turns sleeping on an air mattress in his room when trying to transition him to his crib. We tried to get Braden to sleep in everything in the house short of our chest of drawers. You can go back and read The Quest for Sleep if you want to see what I'm talking about.

In fact just click Sleep to find all the posts that I have written about our troubles over the past two years .

Just last night Braden was up at 2 am crying for someone to get him out of bed. It took Arica and I two trips each to discuss the merits of sleeping at night before he finally went back to sleep. He woke up again later. Then he finally got up a 5:45 to watch TV. Then he went back to sleep on the couch and didn't want to wake up and face the day.

Arica claims he is part owl.

Braden has gone through long stretches where he wakes up around two am every night. I've spent more nights than I can count on the couch with him watching cartoons in the wee hours.

He is just now trying to get over a spell where he cries for two hours when you put him to bed. No matter how you go about it he struggles to sleep more than five hours at a time. He is just wide awake at the most inconvenient times.

Let me stop everyone from suggesting we cut out his nap. We tried that already. When we cut his nap time down to one hour a couple months back he morphed into a miniature flesh colored version of the Incredible Hulk. So naps are still necessary.

This all brings me back to my original point. Braden is the perfect child. He just has a sleeping disorder. I don't need any doctors or sleep disorder experts to tell me that. I know.

So as the twins approach, and Braden continues his all out war against sleep, I think there is only one way this all shakes out. It goes something like this. Coming this Summer to a blogging circle near you, ZOMBIE DAD! Starring me.

Toddler Bed Conversion

I've written a lot about milestones. After all raising a kid is an endless series of milestones, especially in the early years. I've marked the first food, the first steps, and even the first time we had to buy a gallon of milk. That last one was pretty popular so I think I'll give you the link.

On Sunday night I got my butt in gear and prepared our home for the next milestone. We were going to give it a try no matter the cost. It was time to convert Braden's crib into a toddler bed.

While I was making the conversion, Braden came in to watch. I told him I was fixing his bed because he is always asking me to "bix" something. He also has some toy tools that he plays with and will say, "Daddy. I bix" as he pokes and prods at whatever he has deemed broken. I also tried to explain I was making his bed into a big boy bed, but that didn't seem to resonate. Braden kept reading his books only to look up every few minutes and say, "Daddy bix my bed?"

When I was done Arica came on the scene to add the finishing touches. She brought in the Lightning McQueen sheets, bedspread, and pillow case to dress up the bed.

Braden's eyes absolutely lit up. He couldn't wait to get in the bed. We had to literally force him to wait until his Mommy was finished making the bed before he climbed aboard.

As soon as she was done he bounced into the bed and laid down all the while carrying on about his new bed and Lightning McQueen. He was so excited. Laying there he looked like such a big boy it was hard to believe. It's like you flip a switch when the crib is gone. Little boy bedspreads and pillows seem to make all the difference in the world as well. The whole room now looks that much more grown up.

Later that night Braden actually went to bed about 15 minutes early because he just couldn't wait. And he slept all night. We were pleasantly surprised. I was certainly dreading what he would do with his new found nighttime freedom.

Monday night came and he wasn't quite as excited about bedtime. It was like any other night, but eventually he begrudgingly got in bed.

We could hear him in his bed talking for quite a while. Then we heard his door shut followed by the sound of little footsteps. Hoping to nip this thing in the bud, I went back to have a talk with Braden about getting out of bed.

A few minutes later, as if I had never spoken to him, Braden gets up and shuts the door again. This time the footsteps are running, presumably back to the bed. Arica, being the far more successful disciplinarian, went to have a talk with our little nighttime doorman this time.

A few minutes later the door shuts and the footsteps scurry. This time we decide to just let it go. And wouldn't you know Braden went silent. He fell asleep and slept all night again.

Maybe we were too loud. Maybe the lights were too bright. Either way Braden just wanted to shut the door and get a good nights sleep.

Talking to Myself...In the Dark...At 4 AM

We are back to one of the more common topics at Life of a New Dad.  In this post my thoughts are all about sleep, or better yet the lack thereof.

Braden has lately continued his insistence that night time is not always for sleeping. Every other night or so he chooses to wake up in the wee hours and stay up forever. That is fine if he would just use his indoor staying up all night voice.  Instead he uses his I need to scream over the music concert voice.

The decibel level of his night time playfulness might not matter either if our house had a different floor plan. We have an average size house, but it only has two bedrooms.  We will have to upgrade before to long, but for now it is big enough for the three of us and Braden's toy army.  Braden's little chamber of fun is just across the hall from our bedroom. That means when Braden is up Mommy and Daddy are up too.

Last night while both Arica and I were lying awake in bed serenaded by the sounds of gibberish from across the hall, I thought about when we first got our youngest dog Abbey.  She had to sleep in the kennel at night because she wasn't potty trained yet, and we didn't want her wandering the house all night relieving herself on the furniture.  When we put her in the kennel she would howl like a coyote. We solved that problem rather quickly. We moved the kennel to the laundry room at the far end of the house.

Last night I wondered if we could put Braden in the kennel and move him to the laundry room. I decided that would be a bad idea. Braden would probably tear up the kennel.

Instead we changed Braden's diaper, fed him some oatmeal, and gave him some milk. After eating the oatmeal and chugging the milk Braden turned to his Mommy and said "nigh nigh". We assumed he was ready for bed. I was very impressed, and thought this is great. We are on our way to real communication.

That joy was short lived. Braden must have wanted to go to bed because he likes yelling in the dark, because that's what he did. Arica went in the room a few more times to discuss the merits of sleeping at night with him. Each time he would be quiet for a minute or two. Then he would start his latest soliloquy again.  I imagined all his stuffed animals lined up at the foot of his crib as he leans over the rail with a "Friends, rodents, quadrupeds, lend me your ear."

What did we do to solve this problem? We did what any great parents would do. We turned on the TV to drown out the noise, and fell fast asleep.

Family vs. Fraternity: Awake at 3 AM

I wrote a post titled Family vs. Fraternity some months ago. It was an attempt to tell stories about two vastly different parts of my life. It is really a weak attempt to compare life before and after children like millions of others have done before me. In other words, it is not an entirely unique concept.

Nonetheless, I am going to do it again.

We have had some rough nights with Braden lately. He is typically a great sleeper. He has been falling asleep on his own and sleeping through the night for months. For some reason during the last month to six weeks he has started waking up some nights and refusing to go back to sleep. He plays and talks and screams and keeps everyone awake.

So this led me to thinking about the different reasons a person might be up at 3 am. I have compiled two top 10 lists below in this version of Family vs. Fraternity.

Family:

1. Changing a dirty diaper
2. Cleaning yourself up after stupidly trying to change a dirty diaper in the dark
3. Crawling on your hands and knees in the dark looking for a lost pacifier
4. Retrieving lost monkeys
5. Applying medication for teething pain
6. Discussing the virtues of sleeping at night with a 14 month old child
7. Discussing the virtues of sleeping at night with yourself
8. Feeding the kid something in the hope that this will cure his sleeplessness
9. Yelling at the dogs to shut up because they woke the baby
10. Rearranging or swapping out lighted singing toys to try to soothe the little man back to sleep

Fraternity:

1. Bar hopping
2. A friend called you to get them out of jail
3. Waiting on a friend to get you out of jail
4. Poker night
5. Watching Braveheart on stolen HBO for the 57th time
6. No class tomorrow and sleeping is just boring
7. Impromptu road trip to Memphis and/or Tunica Casinos
8. Cramming for a test. Seriously. Stop laughing.
9. Debating the pros and cons of Jim Beam vs. Jack Daniels
10. Party at the fraternity house

Please Go to Sleep

We are undergoing some changes in the Life of a New Dad household. Braden had his one year doctor's visit recently and changes were ordered. The doctor says he should be off formula and drinking regular cow's milk now. He also said that he should be getting off the bottle.

We have now finished with all our formula. Of course we weren't going to throw away any of that powdered gold just because someone with a few letters after his name told us to. We went ahead and got our money's worth. Now it is all gone and we shall never buy it again, at least for Braden.

With the end of formula we have stopped giving Braden a bottle as well. He was weaning himself off the bottle anyway. He would only take a few ounces before he went to bed. I think the end of bottle feeding is a significant milestone. It seems like an official end to having a baby in the house. No more bottle must mean no more baby. Now we have a miniature human running about. He eats what we eat. He drinks what we drink. He is growing up fast.

The biggest change we are experiencing was not doctor mandated. Braden has stopped sleeping through he night. He goes to bed just fine at first. Then he sleeps for several hours. After that he wakes up and cries. Several nights Arica and I took turns sleeping with him. The main reason for that was to get some sleep ourselves. Neither of us was happy to revisit the sleepless life we thought we had left behind months ago. Finally last night we toughed one out until 2 am. We went in and reassured him a few times, and put his pacifier back in his mouth. Other than that we just waited him out. Finally he went to sleep.

I hope that our effort was not in vain. Hopefully it puts an end to Braden's crying for Mommy and Daddy during the night. We are taking several steps forward, but the loss of sleep would be an enormous step back. As the old country song says, nobody gets to far like that.

When Crying is Good

I have written a few times about trying to sleep and trying to get Braden to sleep. Click here for all my previous posts on the topic. Why do I keep coming back to this over discussed area of baby rearing time and again? Simply put, this has been the hardest part about becoming a new parent for me. Every time I think we have it whooped something new comes along.

I wrote long ago about the first time Braden fell asleep on his own. It turns out that was just an anomaly. It was certainly not the start of something great. We have still been rocking him to sleep every night. This is harder than it seems with him being a 22 lb monster child. He has already outgrown his mother's lap. I am constantly begging him to learn to walk in order to save our backs.

Last week Braden started a bad habit. We would work hard to get him to sleep every night. Sometimes it took longer than others. A few nights he never slept in his bed. On the nights that he did sleep it was not through the night. He woke up at 3:30 about four nights in a row. After this he refused to go back to sleep in his crib. Either Arica or myself would end up holding him the rest of the night. Since we are both adamant about keeping him out of our bed we would sleep the rest of the night on some piece of furniture in the living room.

In case you haven't tried it, this is no way to live your life. Working and parenting are hard enough with adequate sleep. Sleeping on the couch with a 22 lb weight on your chest is not relaxing. Cuddling with a baby is fun. Waking up on your couch covered in sweat while struggling to breathe is not fun. Seeing your son's smiling face in the crib each morning is fun. Seeing a red, teary eyed, screaming child in the crib at 3:30 am is not fun. Staying up past your bed time to sneak in the Cardinals game is fun. Staying up all night serenaded by crying is not fun. I think you get the point.

Arica and I knew what we had to do in order to stop this madness. We had to let Braden cry himself to sleep. We have done that a few times when we were at our wits end, but it is never any fun. Hearing your child scream is bad enough based solely on how bad you feel for them. It is extra difficult to sign off on the plan when you add the fact that it takes away from your own sleeping time. Wanting to avoid these issues we kept putting off our date with a night of crying.

Finally on Monday Arica and I decided that enough was enough. We were not getting up at 3:30 in the morning any more. Braden would have to cry himself to sleep. That night we put him to bed and he slept for about an hour. Then he woke up screaming. We left him in the crib despite all our parenting instincts to rescue him. After half an hour he was asleep. He slept all night. Since then every night has been silent. I have not been awakened by screaming one time. The last two nights we even put him to bed awake. It took less than five minutes for him to go to sleep on his own both nights.

I know that there are no guarantees that this will last, but it feels like a natural progression. It seems like something that might stick. Next we can start getting him to bed earlier. Maybe then we can dream of reclaiming some time for ourselves. Arica and I both love holding our son more than anything, but neither of us will cry about the absence of the nightly sleep deprived wrestling matches with our baby boy.

The World Waits on No One

I am happy to report that I am not in Kansas anymore. Unfortunately I have no more to write about fatherhood today than Toto. Unquestionably the worst thing about travelling, other than being away from home, is returning to work to find that the entire world kept on going without you. I have about 5 million things to do today. It would be nice if people were considerate enough to refrain from needing me when I am out of the office. I guess the plus side of being needed is job security.

I came home yesterday to a very happy household. I think both Arica and Braden were happy to see me. I took my turn on night watch last night. Braden was pretty nice to his dad only waking me up around 4:30. I rocked him back to sleep pretty quick.

He has a new fun way of waking us up in the morning. He calls out to us via karate kicks to the side of his crib. He kicks directly at the soother on the side of his crib. I think it is called a soother. It combines a series of lights, jungle sounds, and moving monkeys to help put Braden to sleep. He actually turns in on by kicking it with his feet. We may have a soccer player on our hands since he is operating toys with his feet already. I hope not. I don't like soccer. Soccer broke my nose.

I turned on the baby projector that I posted about here to try and get him to stop kicking for 30 minutes or so. It was 6 in the morning which is way too early for karate. The next thing I knew I woke up and it was 8:30. Now I am late for work on a day that I have a million things to do. So that is my situation. Actually this post is a pretty good assessment of fatherhood for working dad. Happy Fatherhood Friday.

Major Accomplishment

As we travel through life what we might consider a major accomplishment changes quite dramatically. As a child you probably get excited about an "A" on your spelling test. As you get a bit older your proudest accomplishment might be that home run you hit in little league. As a high-schooler you would be proud to make the honor roll or get a college scholarship. After high school the accomplishments get a bit less ambitious for some of us. I have to admit that drinking a whole case of beer without getting sick or passing out was considered among the greatest accomplishments a man could achieve during my college years. Another less than stellar goal could be to eat the old 96er like John Candy did on The Great Outdoors.

When you get married these things change, and when you have children they change even more. Last night our family accomplished something wonderful. Braden, who has been sleeping in his swing for a couple months, actually slept in his crib from 1 to 6 this morning. Normally he is asleep earlier than that, but I am still ecstatic. What makes me even happier is that he fell asleep on his own. I tried 3 or 4 times to put him to sleep then lay him in the crib. Every time he would wake up. Eventually it was time to feed him again because he was still awake. After feeding him I gently placed him in the crib again, and I saw the dreaded open eye stare looking back at me. At this point I was ready to try something else. I set up what I will call a children's projector to occupy Braden. This thing, which is actually called the Fisher Price Musical Projector Soother, projects images onto the ceiling above Braden's bed for him to watch. It also plays music in your choice of classical, lullabies, or nature sounds. I went with the classical and set the projector for 15 minutes.

It was my mission to fall asleep before the thing went off, and hopefully I could sleep through Braden's grunting and squirming after that. To be honest I only turned the music on to help drown out those same sounds. Then something magical happened. There were no more sounds emanating from the crib. Was Braden alive? I had to check and to my surprise I found that he was asleep. As far as I can remember this is the first time he has ever fallen asleep without an assist from Mom or Dad. I think the classical music did the trick because I found myself going into a sleepy trance listening to it as well. I don't know what classical melodies were part of the play list, but they seemed to work on Braden. I once took fine arts musical in college but it didn't stick. I can sing you every song Hank Williams ever wrote but classical music is lost on me. The only thing I remember from the class is we once discussed "Hotel California". It is a classic for sure but not classical. Nonetheless Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, or some other virtuoso helped us with this great achievement.

Now we are a little bit closer to reaching that final step in the Quest for Sleep. The step that I once called on this site "You're on your own." Now our goal as a family is much the same as an invading force. We must push ahead so we don't lose any of our earlier gains. It seems like such a little thing when a person sleeps in their own bed, but in the world of a new parent it is bigger than almost anything including drinking an entire case of beer.

The Quest for Sleep Continues

A little while back I unleashed this diatribe about our Quest for Sleep. It has been nearly a month so I thought I would give an update on this always interesting part of a new dad's life.

Braden is still sleeping in his swing. I have nightmares about the day we will have to break him of this habit. I'm sure those nights will be filled with hours of Braden crying himself to sleep in his crib. That will be hard but it must be done some day in order for Arica and I to return to normal sleeping patterns. Also it has to be done so we aren't still rocking him to sleep in junior high.

Right now Braden usually goes to bed around midnight. Sometimes it is earlier but rarely is he up past 12:30 anymore. Once we tuck him into the swing he normally sleeps until 5 or 6 in the morning. I think this can be considered very close to sleeping all night. If we can just stretch an hour in each direction that would be great. Hopefully this will not all fall apart on us when we move to the crib.

So here we are as new parents. One of us sleeps on the couch every night with the swing just an arm length away. We are there ready to pounce when we hear those awakening noises that Braden makes. We are there ready to soothe him and put him back to sleep if he needs that too. I guess we are in a holding pattern in the quest for sleep. We have found something that works for us and we are sticking with it for the time being. Even with this success we know in the back of our minds that we can't live like this forever. Some day we must forge ahead towards our final destination. The destination of nightlong sleep.

The Quest for Sleep

I have ventured off into my thoughts on video games and television and haven't shared anything about life with my son lately. One of the biggest adjustments for me was trying to function on a few hours of sleep every night. I have come up with some stages that I went through on my quest for sleep. Not unlike Frodo and Sam's quest to destroy the ring this quest is long and difficult and at times will seem impossible but it can be conquered. Here are the stages I went through.

1. What do we do?
2. Calmly trying to sleep
3. Desperately trying to sleep
4. Finding a rhythm
5. Your on your own

What do we do?

This is the stage you are in when you return from the hospital. Your friends have warned you that you won't get any sleep but that is all you know. What will happen? How will we share the responsibility? At our house we started with the boy sleeping in a cradle in our room. I suggest having the baby sleep in your room for some time at first. It is easier since you will be up fifty times a night to feed him. Also the new mom will undoubtedly wake up to check on the baby every time he makes a sound if she sleeps at all. New moms are crazy like that. We pretty much did everything as a team for a couple of weeks. My wife would change his diaper and I would go to the kitchen to make a bottle. This is a good strategy because it gives everyone confidence in handling the baby because there is always support. This is a terrible strategy because neither of you ever get a full nights sleep.



Calmly trying to sleep

After a few weeks of this you will be miserable. Once you have been in a mindless state for a fortnight you are ready to adjust your plan. We started by sharing the nights. One of us would stay up until the boy went to sleep which was usually around 2 o'clock. Then the other teammate would get up at the next feeding time. During all of this the baby is still eating ever 2-3 hours so you get no sleep during your shift. We would alternate shifts every night. When the boy would go to sleep we would ease back into our bedroom and put him in the cradle. This started one of the worst chapters of the entire quest for sleep saga. You would work forever to get him to sleep then as soon as he hit the mattress those big dark eyes would open and stare back at you. I know that your child's beautiful eyes can bring you a smile on the darkest of days. But at 3 am when he suddenly awakens and stares at you as if to say what's up you just want to jump screaming out of the window and run for the hills. During this sleepless chapter of our lives my wife and I continued to try and try every night until he would finally sleep in his cradle. We didn't want him forming bad habits about where he slept so most of our nights read like the back of a shampoo bottle. Rock to sleep, rinse, repeat. We would let him sleep in the swing or bouncy chair during the day but not at night. We were determined.

Desperately trying to sleep

This went on for a while and neither of us was getting any sleep. We finally decided to break up the shift work and just alternate nights. This way we could get a full nights sleep every other night. Still this hurt our family life. Whomever had the night off would go to bed early or fall asleep on the couch. Neither of us was ever in a good mood. You start to wonder if you will even survive this sleepless hell. One particularly difficult night I woke up to my boy screaming. I found my wife completely exhausted and frustrated. She was at her wits end. I took over the shift so she could go to bed. I stayed in the living room with the boy the rest of the night. I moved the pack and play into the living room and put him in. Then a miracle occurred. He slept. So for the next few nights we put the pack and play in the bedroom with us. Life was wonderful. The boy slept and we stayed in the bed together. Of course we got up a couple of times a night to feed him but that was OK. He was no longer waking up every time we laid him down. This only lasted a few days. All of a sudden he hated the pack and play so the quest for sleep shifted gears. My wife tried using the crib in his room. Apparently he liked this now. We put an air up mattress on the floor in his room and one of us slept there every night. This lasted about a week. Then he quit sleeping in his crib. At this point we had been through the cradle, the pack and play, and the crib. We were running out of places for the boy to sleep outside of a few cardboard boxes I had in the attic. We were desperate. This is where all the good intentions of following advice you read or you get from health care professionals goes out the window. We no longer gave a crap about forming bad habits or anything else. If we couldn't find a way to get some sleep there was going to be a homicide at our address. We gave in and started letting him sleep in the swing.



Finding a rhythm

We are currently finding a rhythm that has restored order and peace to our home. The boy is sleeping in his swing every night. We are not even trying anything else. We will worry about that later. I haven't mentioned but through this ordeal he has started eating more and less often. Now the boy goes 4 hours between meals during the day and 5 or 6 hours at night. We take turns sleeping on the couch beside his swing. This has been going on for about 2-3 weeks. Lately the boy has been asleep by midnight. He will wake up and eat a little around 4 or 5. Then he sleeps until 8 or 9 before eating again. From where we have been this seems like heaven. Both of us are getting a pretty good nights sleep every night. All that remains is for us to one day again sleep in the same bed. I can't wait for that day but I will be satisfied with our new rhythm for now.



Your on your own

I assume this is the next step. We have not made it there so I might learn that there are a few detours still yet to take. This is the step where you put your baby in his crib in his room and go sleep in your bed in your room. My wife will have a really hard time with this. I am sure one day I will have to insist that she comes back to bed with me. We will worry about that when the boy starts rolling out of his swing. I figure that is a good time to put him back in the crib. I hope that goes relatively smoothly because I don't want to revisit any of Dante's 9 circles of hell.


The quest for sleep is a long and arduous road if you have a non sleeper. Some people will have babies that sleep all night right from the start. To these people I say get out of my face before I strike you. If you are currently on your own quest for sleep good luck and god speed.