I...need...SLEEP!!!

Edward is having sleep issues...well, that' putting it lightly actually. Really, to be blunt, he is sleeping like crap. I don't know how this started, I just know that I want out, bad. At six weeks old, he was sleeping so well - 5-6 hours at a time, and I was thanking my lucky stars that we didn't have another Josephine on our hands (that's a story for another day - the short of it is that she was the worst sleeper EVER, and did not sleep more than a half an hour at a time until she was 11 months old). He took nice long 2-3 hour naps, and I was in heaven. Ah, but that seems like a lifetime ago at this point...

This is a scene not often had at our house right now - Edward sleeping peacefully - oh, how I long for those days again!!!

I am convinced that the miracle blanket (I've blogged about it before), was responsible for his sleeping so well, so young. But, unfortunately, he grew out of it, and right around the same time, his sleeping started to go downhill. First, he just started waking up more at night, and then the naptimes got shorter and shorter. He is now waking up AT LEAST 7-8 times a night, and waking up after only 30 minutes of naptime, which means he (not to mention the rest of us) is chronically overtired. Wow, it's like deja-vu - HELLO Josephine...sigh.

Lou and I are desperate for sleep, and are at the point where we argue through the wee hours of the morning over whose turn it is to go and deal with the screaming angry baby who does NOT want to sleep alone in his crib. There has been more than a few times now that Edward and I are both crying in his room - a pretty pathetic sight, if you ask me.

And in case you are wondering, NO, I did not bring this habit on myself - I made none of the mistakes this time around that I made with Josephine such as:

• co-sleeping early on
• nursing the baby to sleep all the time
• rocking the baby to sleep

Nope, I was determined to not make those mistakes again - I make sure he is drowsy but awake when I put him down, and he falls asleep just fine, it's just that he doesn't stay asleep, and wakes up over and over and over and over, until Lou and I think we just might go mad.

We've tried several things to combat this, including:

The "Swaddleme", made by Kiddopotomas (recommended by a friend). It's a swaddler for bigger babies, and has velcro so that baby can't break free...except for the fact that somehow or other, Edward does (seriously, how does a baby get past velcro straps?), and at this point, he actually really resents not being able to have his hands free at all times (even though he sleeps soooo much better when he's wrapped up tight, since he startles a LOT in his sleep). So, after several nights of failure, we ditched it.

Edward is VERY gassy, so we thought it might be waking him up. I've heard that Mylacon drops kind of suck (and I don't like overmedicating babies with drugs), so Lou found this all-natural anti-gas stuff (with stuff like ginger and anise), and when Edward is gassy, it works like a charm, stopping his crying within 5 minutes and softening up his hard belly...but he still wakes up all night, just not from gas - darn it.

So then we bought a sound machine with all kinds of white noise sounds. Edward loves loud white noise like the vacuum cleaner, the washer, the dryer, the blender, etc. So we thought, "Hey, they calm him down during the day, maybe they would help him be calm and sleep better at night". Um, no luck there either - crap.

At this point, we've spent over $50 trying to get something that would help with this sleep problem, and so far, we have nothing to show for it...

Oh, and yes, we have also tried the "crying it out" method. It worked fine for Maria (our angel sleeper), but not for Josephine, and not for Edward either. We've let him cry up to an hour, at which point his sheets are drenched with tears and he is twitching and gagging like he is having siezures - nowhere near sleepy land.

So, short of selling him on Ebay (no way am I doing that, seeing as the hell I went through physcially to get him here... :), I have no idea what to do. I did everything I was supposed to this time - I didn't "spoil" him by rocking/nursing him to sleep and/or co-sleeping, I make sure his belly is full and his diaper is dry before I put him down. And the two parental units here are just tired beyond all reason on a regular basis. I know that these times don't last forever, and there are bigger problems in life (I'm sure when he's sixteen and mouthy and all that, I'll long for these days), but tell me that at 3 in the morning when I'm in his room for the 5th time that night and I'll probably tell you to shove it - because that's about my attitude in the middle of the night when I've had zero sleep...

So hey, any suggestions out there?