Goodbye, cheese.

Well, sad to say I have reached the end of my rope with Ben's sleep habits.  After doing a little research, I came to conclude that he POSSIBLY might have silent reflux/heartburn.  He doesn't spit up very often, but he will occasionally get a horribly nasty look on his face and kind of smack his lips, not to mention the fact that he won't go more than an hour and fifteen minutes without waking up. I don't feel that he's waking because he's hungry, because he'd often go right back to sleep into a deep sleep after only 5 minutes of nursing. So, I feel that he was waking up mostly for comfort. I can understand that if you have heartburn (which I honestly have never had, another benefit to having a baby early I guess) you might like a nice drink of milk to cool down your throat, yes?  And then after a little drink maybe you will feel better and go back to sleep.

He doesn't have really any of the other symptoms. But I just don't know what else it could be. Unless he's just an awful sleeper and we are just doomed. Which I realize is a distinct possibility. :)

So, as a hail Mary, I eliminated dairy as of yesterday.  Just in case. I figured it can't hurt, right?

Wonder of wonders. This morning, which would have been about 36 hours after my last real ingestion of dairy, Ben slept for 2 hours and fifteen minutes straight from about 4:30 to 6:45 a.m. This is for a kid who normally will have his longest stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night and then the stretches get progressively shorter as the night goes on. Previous to this stretch he was getting up every hour to 1.5 hours, as usual.

So then, this morning, he took a 2.5 hour nap. This kid normally naps 2.5 hours TOTAL in a day in 3 or 4 naps, so to do it all at once was incredible. Granted he did wake up and nurse but went right back to sleep (I woke him up because I was on the phone, my bad Ben).  Now he's asleep again, been asleep for about 30 minutes. He seems like he's sleeping so much deeper, not stirring at every little noise.

Now, it could be a coincidence.  And we'll see how he sleeps tonight. Maybe all the sleep he is getting today will keep him up tonight, who knows. But I'm hoping it doesn't!

We shall see. I love cheese, I mean almost everything I make for dinner has cheese on it. Cheese on my hamburger, cheese on my turkey sandwiches, cheese on my salads...I love cheese. I also love LOVE whole milk, yum yum! But I don't love cheese more than I love my son. And I also don't love cheese more than sleep. Ha! :)

Again this could be a coincidence. Like maybe Ben was in the longest growth spurt EVER and now is finally in the sleep phase. But, we'll see.  Tomorrow is his 6 month check up and I'm going to talk to his doc about it too. I wonder if he does have reflux if it could have been sabotaging his weight gain a little bit too.