Coulson finally will go to sleep without a huge fight! I used to dread putting him to bed at night, and some days trying to get him to take a nap was just a joke. I know they say to get babies on a wake-sleep-eat schedule so they don't use food as a sleep prop, but when Coulson was first born it was literally impossible to keep him awake while feeding him, and when he got tired he got mad and the only way to calm him down so he could sleep was feeding him, so I got in the habit of feeding him to sleep. And it didn't help that when he woke up in the middle of the night, if I fed him back to sleep then he stayed asleep longer so I got more sleep than if I tried to just give him back his pacifier, which would fall out and wake him up again quite soon thereafter. I didn't even realize until it was too late how extremely dependent he had become on nursing to get back to sleep at night. He almost always woke up screaming inconsolably, even after naps. During the day I could take him outside for a short walk to calm him down, but at night all I could do was nurse him (plus, a walk woke him up, which was definitely not the goal at 3:00 a.m.).
And here is my attempt to finish this post...
When I realized that I had a huge problem on my hands, I tried several things to fix it. I tried putting him down drowsy but awake, but he would startle and freak out as I bent over to lay him down. I tried giving him a bottle of breast milk to fall asleep to even though I knew I wasn't supposed to, but that only helped a couple times anyway. I tried making him cry it out but I would give up after like 10 minutes (and no, checking on him didn't help -- it made it worse). I tried using a hand on his tummy to rock him back and forth until he fell asleep, and that made him go to sleep calmly but didn't help him learn to go to sleep on his own, so he still woke up a few times a night and I had to nurse him back to sleep those times.
Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and tried just letting him cry himself to sleep no matter how long it took. Unfortunately, Chrisser couldn't quite take it and would go in and rock him to sleep after about 20 minutes. So I switched to making him cry it out for naps while Chrisser was gone. For a while he just screamed for an hour and then I got him up and he didn't get a nap (it was a rough couple of weeks...), but one time he finally did fall asleep on his own after about a half hour. That seemed to be a turning point for him. He still fought it and screamed himself to sleep for a few days, but at least he went to sleep on his own now. And after a while of that he would just scream for about 5 minutes and then calm down and go to sleep.
Then one day (Feb. 12, to be exact) I put him in bed for the night, said "I love you! Nigh-night!" and left, and he just went to sleep! No fussing! No screaming! No waking up! My inner self was singing the Hallelujah Chorus all night :)
There have been several nights since then that he's woken up a couple hours after going to bed, but there have only been 2 times that I can think of that we've had to go back in to calm him down. He usually just fusses for about 5 minutes and then goes back to sleep. Also, in the last couple of weeks he has started fighting going to sleep again (aka crying and sitting up as soon as I lay him down), but I just say "nigh-night" and leave anyway and he still goes to sleep by himself after a bit.
HALLELUJAH!
Also, side note that I couldn't find a good place for in the above paragraphs, somewhere during that time we started being more consistent with our bedtime routine: Put on his pajamas, read scriptures, say prayer, brush his teeth, sing a lullaby, and go to bed. I'm sure that consistency helped him be willing to go to sleep as well.
