The night heard round the world

And now, another installment in the sleep saga.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this week we had to take an unexpected trip to Iowa for my paternal grandpa's funeral. Because my brothers were staying at the parents' house, we stayed at my maternal grandma's house, in her finished basement. And since the visitation was Tuesday evening and the funeral midday Wednesday, we decided to stay 2 nights. This was the first big test for Holden away from home, only about two weeks after we had started sleep training. How'd he do? Well let's just say that Holden's not quite ready to take the show on the road yet. In retrospect, we wonder if we wouldn't have been better off leaving after the funeral events and arrive home to our own beds late Wednesday night.

The first day went surprisingly well. We arrived just in time to go to the visitation, from about a 4 1/2 hour drive that Holden mostly slept through. Despite the fact that it was cutting into his bedtime, the little guy was a real trooper and even a bit of an entertainer that evening. He apparently decided that the large room would be a good space to test his vocal cords, much to the amusement and entertainment of his older relatives. That night he went to bed about an hour later than his usual bedtime and fell asleep within 7 minutes of being put to bed. I was amazed by this feat, considering that we were a) staying in a really dark, kind of creepy basement; b) he was in a pack n' play; and c) we had him in a rather large room just outside the door of the bedroom we were sleeping in. After about 30 min, he woke up, but settled fairly quickly after I went to check on him. And then thankfully, he slept the rest of the night.

But the next day we weren't as lucky. In the morning we tried to put Holden to bed for a nap to no avail, which pretty much resulted in an hour-long struggle of wills. This was okay though, since thankfully, he made up for this nap by sleeping through the funeral. The real struggle came that night when, after a day of too many new faces and not enough daytime zzzs, he just would not sleep. We did our usual routine, put him to bed, sat quietly nearby in the bedroom....and he wailed. He wailed and he wailed and he wailed. And we checked often, but with little luck. So in fear that we might wake my grandma and the neighborhood, I nursed him until he was pretty much asleep, and put him back in bed. And after a few fusses he fell asleep for the night...or so we thought.

About 30 minutes he woke up again, and we tried to console him. This didn't work. He would stop, and about 5 minutes later, start up again. We waited and checked again, and again, and...well you get the picture. We started writing frantic notes to one another in the nearby room "what we do? I don't know...you try something...." I tried to nurse him again. Didn't work. Etc., etc. Finally, about 3 hours after he we had first put him to bed, Mike took him in his arms and somehow, was able to soothe him to sleep. And then he gingerly put him down, crept into our room, and we both held our breaths. Finally, he was asleep, and amazingly he didn't wake up until morning. And thankfully, because my grandma's hard of hearing, she didn't hear a thing!

So it looks like Holden needs a little more practice before we leave home again. That's the bad news.

But here's the good news. Last night he went to bed with few problems, and this morning he napped for 2 hours straight. In other words, this blip didn't seem to affect his overall schedule. And this trip helped us to think about what we can do better next time he has so much trouble. Which is fortunate, since we have another trip coming up in mid-April! Are you sure you want us at your house, DC peeps?