"Need Daddy!"

You may recall that Craig was recently gone on a ten-day business trip. I didn't get the impression that Isaac missed Craig a whole lot while he was gone, but it turns out that his return triggered some emotions -- mostly a fear of abandonment, or at least a strong desire to know where Craig is at any given moment. Almost as soon as Craig leaves Isaac's room at bedtime, Isaac starts saying to me, "Don't know what Daddy doing." And after I put Isaac in bed and say good night, he no longer talks and sings happily to himself until he falls asleep. Instead, even before I'm out of the room, he calls out, "Need Daddy!"

"Hey, wait a minute," you may be thinking, "I thought Isaac was sleeping well these days" (unless, of course, you're thinking, "Jeez, not another post about sleep"). Yeah, it was just two weeks ago that I was crowing about Isaac's new ability to fall asleep on his own at bedtime. Well, it was great while it lasted! He kept it up during a four-night visit to my parents' house and during Craig's absence. It was only after Craig came back home on the 18th that the sleep problems developed, perhaps because Isaac became Daddy-centric.

That's an exaggeration, because it isn't all about Craig. Isaac does still call out for me, especially if he's very upset or if he wakes up in the middle of the night, but lately when he's having trouble falling asleep he calls out for Daddy more than Mama, which is highly unusual. Although I find this interesting, I'd rather that he just went to sleep -- especially as he's not satisfied when either of us makes a brief appearance in his room in response to his cries. As soon as we reassure him, tell him it's bedtime, and begin to leave the room, he cries out, "Need Daddy again!"

This puts us in a tough situation. We've never left him to cry alone while he fell asleep, and we don't want to start now. But just two weeks ago he was falling asleep happily on his own, and two weeks before that he was having trouble falling asleep with me sitting in the room. I don't want to take a step backward, especially back to something that wasn't working well in the first place!

Tonight was a relatively good night -- it only took 25 minutes for him to fall asleep, he never really cried, and Craig and I only made one visit each. (Could you resist the politely plaintive, "Need hug from Daddy, please" coming through the baby monitor? Yeah, not Craig either.) But four times in the past week it has taken him an hour or more to fall asleep -- an hour, plus his cries of misery, his constant pleas for us to come into his room, and our frequent fruitless attempts to reassure him. It's been rough.

There's been a lot of variety over the last two weeks. Some nights we've rocked him, talked to him, sung to him, and then set him back down in bed while he was still awake. Some nights we've given him a cup of milk to drink in bed. Some nights I've stayed in his room and sung until he fell asleep. One night things dragged on so long that eventually we were ready to go to sleep ourselves, so we let him sleep in our bed. And some nights he's fallen right asleep all on his own!

Clearly we don't have a strategy in mind here -- except, perhaps, just waiting it out, and hoping that the next change in Isaac's sleep habits will be a positive one.

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Actually, for the past week we have been trying an experiment -- does waking Isaac up from his nap at 3:30 instead of 4:00 p.m. make it any easier for him to fall asleep at night? The results are not promising, but one thing is certain -- it makes for a shorter nap.

Previously his nap was at least two hours long, and now it's about an hour and a half. That half hour makes a big difference. I used to have time to do two things while he napped, and I didn't have to hurry. I could easily blog and exercise, or take a nap and work in the garden. Now I have to choose just one.