Sleeping soundly in the stroller, one of the many
moving objects he prefers to a boring old crib

Those of you who are regular readers may have noticed that we are fairly open about the trial and error that is involved in our (and probably all) parenting. All issues regarding sleep for our second child have been more "error" than not. When he joined our family, we implemented all the same wonderful advice from Baby 411 that worked so completely for our first child. As a result, our sweet, happy, laughter-filled child learned to go sleep on his own every night. He knows how to self-soothe, we have a consistent sleep ritual, and we put him down while he's still awake. And despite all of this, without fail, he wakes up every 3 hours, mostly inconsolable, all night long. He is now more than 8 months old and we are very tired.

We've tried many things. Beyond the tools we acquired from Baby 411 and the stuff we wrote about in our post about sleep, we went back to the source and implemented some more techniques from Ferber. We Googled and Googled and Googled (we may have even Binged once). We've owned and burned out the motors on multiple swings (though our Fisher Price Snugabunny is still going strong, if you're looking for a recommendation on swings). We've stepped up and down many different interventions, to only mildly improving avail. And so, now, we've finally gone to a professional and hired a sleep consultant. Did I mention how tired we were? Very, very tired.

We are now a week or so into implementing a new plan and things are improving overall. However, as with many behavior modification techniques, in the short term the medicine can be worse than the disease. Which is to say, our overnight sleep is getting worse as he's learning to put himself back to sleep in the middle of the night; we are all experiencing more interrupted sleep and more crying than we've had in the past. This, plus the upcoming Passover holiday, makes getting new content here a bit more than we can achieve.

We will be back in full force in a few days, once we've slept enough to at least remember which child is which. In the meantime, feel free to do one or all of these things:

Check out the Archives

How to drink a cup of coffee while caring for a 6 week old baby
Monitors: say no to the Kid TV channel
The nerdy mom's pregnancy reading list
Striking the balance between street urchin and sterile bubble kid
Out and about when you don't lactate (or choose not to)

Talk to Us!

Join us in the comments below (or on any page for that matter)

About you-

How many kids/fetuses do you have?
Where do you live?
What's your parenting superpower?

About us-

How'd you find out about us?
Anything you'd like to see us cover more? Less?

Guest Post for Us

Have you been reading and thinking "I know about this topic!" or "I tried this awesome thing that solved a problem and everyone should know about it" or just "The internet should hear my opinions more often"?

If so, send us an email stairwell @ acrossb dot com. Let us know what you'd like to talk about and we'll be happy to discuss a guest post.

We're just about 3 months into this whole blogging thing and we're having a great time!

In all honesty, we're amazed that about 900 (!!) of you have found the site and that lots of you stuck around (and come back again!).

Google Analytics can tell us a few things (about those of you who haven't blocked their cookies) like what time of day is popular (afternoon), more of you come from Facebook than Twitter, and we know you come from cities all over the world (lots of metro Boston, largely other Anglophone places, but we've had hits from every non-Antarctica continent).

But beyond these highly aggregated variables, we don't know much about you and we'd love to learn more about our new little community.

So given that this is the slow time of year at work and if you're reading this at home, you're quite possibly avoiding family, why not kill a couple more minutes with a fun activity.  In other words, we're inviting you to introduce yourself.

If you haven't noticed before, scroll down on every post and you'll see a place to add your comments. If you have a Disqus account, great. If not, you can comment as a guest, also great!

We both have a long history of lurking on blogs and forums, but now that we're on the other side of the website (that's how the tubes work, right?), we ask you to be bold and say hello.

We'd love to hear thoughts on any of all (or even just one) of these:

About you-
How many kids/fetuses do you have? (or as One Bad Mother would say in their charmingly all inclusive way: Who lives in your house?)
Where do you live?
What's your parenting superpower?

About us-
How'd you find out about us?
Anything you'd like to see us cover more? Less?

About unleashing your inner nerd-
Kirk or Picard?
Buffy or Willow?
Will you show the prequels to your children?
Harry Potter books or movies first?