That night we figured out a piece of the puzzle. The skin on his forehead was itchy or sore, and it was upsetting him. His cute habit of nuzzling our chests? He was scratching. Sidling up to the side of the bassinet to "get closer to me"? No, scratching. His constant eye-rubbing while asleep? Scratching. I can't BELIEVE we didn't notice it all before. The patches of skin that were bothering him were slightly red at times, but they just didn't look that bad, so we hadn't connected the dots. The poor baby! Lying there with his hands swaddled all night, trying to sleep through itching and burning... awful.
I even searched through my email and message history and compared it to the weather history and discovered that almost all of Silas' worst nights came after dry days with low humidity. The dry air must have been making things worse, and the warmer, moister days must have helped.
That night we put lanolin on his forehead. He slept from 7:30-11:00 and 11:00-1:00 before he started waking constantly. Hey, it was an improvement.
The next day we got the pediatrician's advice and put Aquaphor and 1% hydrocortisone on his skin. We gooped him up constantly during the day. NO CHAPPED BABIES IN OUR HOUSE.
That night he slept from 7:30-11:00, 11:00-1:00, and 1:00-3:30 before he started waking up constantly. Another improvement! During the day, he stopped grinding his head into our shoulders. He stopped rubbing his head with his hands. We were thrilled - we had FINALLY helped him feel better.
Last night, we prepped his skin as before and hoped for an even better night. We put him down at 7:30, and when he woke up at 10:00 I nearly cried myself - he hadn't even made it 3 hours, and he was once again nuzzling the bassinet wall. Had it all been a coincidence? Was he going to sleep as badly as ever? Had we imagined all the improvements we had seen????
As I lay there watching him, I noticed he wasn't cramming his whole face into the wall, just his nose. And then I suddenly realized I was rubbing my OWN nose right that very moment - it was itching because of the dry air. My own nose itched, my face felt dry, and my throat was actually pretty scratchy. How must he feel? I remembered that the Nest (our thermostat) has a built-in hygrometer, so I checked it - 21% humidity. Babies are supposed to need 60% humidity. Oh dear.
At midnight, after the second waking, we moved the humidifier (which had been ineffectively humidifying the other corner of the bedroom) to the little table right next to the co-sleeper. Within about 10 minutes my own nose stopped itching and my face felt better. Silas went to sleep... and he stayed asleep for THREE HOURS. No more nose rubbing. I watched him come up out of a sleep cycle, grunt and wiggle, fart a bit, open his eyes, and then go back to sleep on his own. Oh, thank God. (Unfortunately, guess who was watching him sleep during those three hours? .......)
However, after those beautiful 3 hours, Silas was once again grunting, squirming and waking every hour. Still better than every 20 minutes, and we've only rarely had him sleep peacefully towards the end of the night, but after such a rough go, it's hard not to despair. I think we've figured out some real issues - the skin, the humidity - that have real, lasting, noticeable effects on Silas during the day. I'm glad we're making progress in helping him feel better. Why can't we figure out the rest of the puzzle? It's possible there's no reason that he sleeps badly at the end of the night, but after this recent experience I think it's more likely that there IS a reason, and we haven't found it yet.
Our next plan is to return to changing his diaper somewhere in the middle of the night. We found a brand that doesn't generally overflow and we stopped changing him, because of course it wakes him up, but now we're wondering whether it doesn't just make him very uncomfortable at the end.
Cross your fingers. The first time we help him to sleep more than an hour in a row after 4 AM, I'm throwing a party.
If anybody has any ideas about what else we can try, we're all ears.
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