Sleep! (but not like a baby, please)

I feel like one of the most uninteresting things in the world (especially to non-mothers) is a baby's sleeping habits.  Talking about it makes me want to go to sleep...I just wish it had the same effect on said baby.  But I need to record the ridiculousness of this baby, just so I remember and re-read if we decide to try for a third child.

Not to sugarcoat it, but Jackson really sucks at sleeping.

Whenever you find yourself army crawling out of a 9-month old's room, you know he owns you.

At this point, Jackson wakes up 3-4 times per night, every night.  Two nights ago, we had a major breakthrough.  He woke for the first time at 3 am...which meant I slept 4 consecutive hours...a means for celebration.  It was awesome.  But then he woke at 4:30, then 6:30, then woke up for good at 7:30.  It seems that after he wakes for the first time, things spiral downhill and he wakes every two hours.  Its a classic parent frustration -- the first several hours of sleep are usually the best - which is awesome if you're a person that goes to bed at 8 pm.

Usually, Jackson wakes up for the first time around 11 or 12.  As a rule of thumb, its usually about 10  minutes after I fall asleep.  Inevitably, if I stay up to wait for him to wake as to decrease the number of times I get awoken from slumber, he will use those nights as opportunities to sleep longer.  So kind. 

The good news? I have a really comfy chair in Jackson's room so I can generally sleepwalk through the whole process. Which sadly, means feeding him almost every time he wakes, although I know he doesn't need to eat, and I'm probably feeding into the problem, literally.  But I'm simply too tired to do anything else.

There have been several nights I've held strong and not nursed him each time.  I'll make Eric go in - he's crying though, so of course I'm awake anyway through the whole process.  It takes a while, but Eric can generally get him back to sleep.  Then he'll wake up 30-45 minutes later and its usually those moments I wonder if we can take him back to the dealership for a trade-in.  Same goes if I let him cry.  He'll eventually put himself to sleep, but is up shortly after and I'll wonder why I didn't just feed him the first time and save us all the misery.  

The other night I realized the stark difference between standing at your child's crib in the middle of the night when you're bone tired and sitting down while you're bone tired.  At the time, Jackson was falling back asleep but would cry if I left the room.  As long as I was standing at his crib, he was fine.  I use the term standing loosely, since I was depending on the crib to support myself.  I think this is the time I ended up crawling out of the room in attempts to be inconspicuous.

Other good news, he falls asleep on his own every night (with the aid of a paci) and getting him down for bedtime and naptime is generally breezy.  He's become a fairly good napper and we've got a good schedule going, so its not all doom and gloom on the sleeping front.

What I really need is a vacation away.  Let Eric deal with Jackson for a few nights.  Eric sleeps like the dead, so there is a good chance he'd wake up and report that Jackson didn't wake up once!  This is sounding like a pretty good plan...