I know millions of babies have slept on their stomachs and lived. I also know that putting your baby onto his back to sleep is the safest. But what do you do when you have a baby who HATES to sleep on his back?
m didn't always hate to sleep on his back. He used to do it just fine, when he was swaddled. Now that I no longer swaddle him, we have problems. He doesn't mind sleeping on his side, and I don't mind letting him do it either. He likes to lay on his side and have me pat his back while he falls asleep. The problem is, he doesn't stay that way.
Unfortunately, he inherited his father's muscle spasms/weird jerking thing as he falls asleep. Steve has mastered the art of sleeping through it (although it sometimes wakes me up). m has not mastered this art yet. As he falls asleep his arm or leg jerks and he wakes up again. Sometimes this happens right away and I can get him back to sleep. Other times it happens later and I'm not there anymore. Usually when it happens he ends up rolling onto his back and the screaming cycle begins. Sometimes he'll roll himself onto his side again and manage to fall back asleep (this is rare though). Usually he just kicks and screams until I come in to save him.
The other thing that happens is after he's fallen completely asleep he rolls onto his back. He usually wakes up from this and once again the screaming cycle begins. Last week after spending nearly an hour trying to beat this cycle and get him to nap, I finally thought, I'm going to put him onto his stomach and see what happens. Well, he protested for all of 3 seconds, fell right to sleep and slept for an hour! I'm lucky when I get a 30 minute nap out of him.
Cut to last night. After two hours of screaming, I tried rocking him to sleep, nursing him to sleep, patting him to sleep, snuggling him to sleep, but nothing was working. I also gave him ibuprofen (he's got 4 teeth coming in right now; his gums are so swollen it looks like his teeth are going to pop through the front of his gums!) Steve stepped in and tried to help but couldn't get him to sleep either. Finally I decided to lay him on his tummy. Once again, a few seconds of protest, then sound asleep.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting at the edge of the bed watching him and drifting off to sleep myself. I was desperately trying not to fall asleep so that I could turn him over when I knew he was sound asleep. After about 15 minutes I was able to turn him over. Of course, it woke him up again but only briefly and thankfully mommy got a few hours of sleep before he woke up again. It was great.
I don't know what to do though. I'm terrified to let him sleep on his stomach but I know that's how he sleeps best. I'm told that while you should always put baby down on his back to sleep, once he starts rolling onto his stomach in his sleep it's okay to leave him. He can roll over just fine, but he won't roll himself onto his stomach in his sleep.
What to do, what to do?
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