We've fallen into a pretty good nighttime routine around the Salvatore house. Of course, the minute I say that, it will all change, but for now, here it is. At around 8pm we start diaper changes and warming bottles, while the Pajanimals entertain the babies. Then everyone lies down and sucks down some milk while Daddy and I "clean up" the toys and books that have been taken out and used all evening. After bottles, we brush teeth and swaddle the kiddos up (YES, we still swaddle them - get over it) and settle in with Sprout for a bit more of the Good Night Show with Nina. I'd love to read books with them, but even swaddled they pop their arms out and crawl over to grab the book and change the pages - not bedtime behavior! Maybe someday.
Anyway, after about 20 minutes of Driver Dan and Caillou, Daniel is ready for bed and I cart him off, kiss him on the forehead, and plop him in his crib. Ten to fifteen minutes later, it's Caroline's turn. The time in between is crucial so that Daniel is asleep before I put Caroline down. Once he's asleep, it takes A LOT to wake him, but if I go in too early or Caroline's too fussy, we'll have them all crying.
Usually, Daniel goes down around 9 and Caroline goes down 15 minutes later, after we watch the Berenstain Bears (sorry this somehow turned into an ad for SproutOnline...oops!) The other night, though, she was apparently ready for bed before I thought she was, as she got up and toddled toward the back of the house on her own. Every once in a while, I have to talk Caroline into going to bed. I point out that she's a good big girl, going into her big girl room to sleep in her pretty big girl crib. For whatever reason, this convinces her.
It does not convince Max. Max does not like going to bed. After the other two are down, I spend some one-on-one cuddle time with Max in the living room. We turn off the tv and snuggle in the dark for a while. Sometimes he falls asleep, and sometimes he doesn't. There have been nights when I absolutely could not put him to bed until he was FAST ASLEEP. Last week, while he was teething, he seemed to have an other-worldly aversion to his room. He would be fast asleep, completely limp in my arms, and then go rigid and start screeching the minute I crossed the threshold into the room. Step back into the hall and he was fine - it was bizarre. Luckily, with a couple of days of aromatherapy pillow spray, he's gotten past that, but it was scary nonetheless.
Putting Max to bed is tricky business, in part because he seems to have night terrors. This means that the normal "cry it out" method we can use on the other babies does not apply to him, because when he's crying he might not actually be awake and needing to learn how to soothe himself back to sleep, but actually still be asleep and needing to wake up so that he can clear his brain of the terror. As it's been explained to me, it's kind of like a spooky image that gets stuck in his brain until he wakes up and it's cleared, completely, like you've hit "reset" on your computer. One night he was sobbing, screaming, and thrashing, but obviously not really "awake", even though his eyes were open. The advice nurse we talked to told us she'd just been to a training on night terrors and that recent research shows it may be connected to the same thing that gives older children and adults leg cramps at night, and so that it's good to give them something solid to eat to help calm it down - we've tried bananas, and it seems to work, so far.
But it also means that I'm extra careful when it's Max who wakes up crying. Last night, around 11:30, he started sobbing. I could hear him from the living room and went back to hover outside the door. It's a heart wrenching thing to stand in a dark hallway listening to your child crying, trying to determine if it's "bad enough" to warrant going in and getting him up (and potentially waking the other children). I've even caught myself petting the door jamb and repeating "shhh...shhhh..shhhhh", as if he could feel it through the door. Last night, I was just about to slide in and grab him, no doubt setting myself up for an hour or more of cuddling and calming, when I heard WHOOMPH as he flopped back down on his mattress, a little muffled whimper as he snuggled in, and then just a faint breathing sound, that I might have been imagining, since the white noise machine is cranked up pretty loud in that room.
And that was it, he slept through the rest of the night.
So, it's all just a guessing game, I guess.
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