Awhile back, I wrote a post about the “where should the baby sleep” question. I am a huge advocate of SIDS awareness so I have very strong opinions, but I have learned that what is right for me is not always right for everyone else. But this post isn’t about where they sleep, it’s about actual physical sleep (or lack there of).

That first day home was fairly chaotic. Everyone left fairly early (thank goodness). My parents and my sister stayed over one night because they were coming from Ohio. Everything seemed to be going well that night. My son fell asleep while being held by his Papa (my father) and everyone went to bed shortly thereafter.

He started screaming at about 2:00am and I heard it in stereo because we had the baby monitors on in our room. We really didn’t need baby monitors in a house our size. Boy was that loud.

My little baby boy had his time zones mixed up. It was 2:00am, but he wanted food and play in that order. We gave him a bottle and when he was done, he looked at us and smiled a big grin. We were lost. He never did go back to sleep. At about 7:00am, my parents came into our room and took my son so we could go back to sleep for a little while.

Forcing him to stay awake during the day for the next few days was pretty rough. He wasn’t a crabby baby. He never really protested, but you could tell that he wanted to sleep. His little eyes would roll back and his head would fall to the side. It took us about a week to get him on the EST time zone sleep schedule (which I’m told isn’t bad). It took us another few weeks to get his stomach on the EST time zone. Even though at six months he should have been able to sleep through the night, his stomach was hungry at about 2:00am as he was getting used to his new schedule. After a week of all night playing, I didn’t care as long as he went back to bed after his bottle.

Lesson Learned: Remember time zones.

Lesson Learned: Grandparents were invaluable that first night.

Lesson Learned: Learn to take naps when the baby is napping.

Lesson Learned: After the first few weeks, letting him scream a little at night instead of running to go get him didn’t hurt him at all and he very quickly adapted to his new sleep schedule. It nearly killed us (the parents), but he came out just fine.