My son has never been a good sleeper. For the first two months, he would wake up every hour to eat. And trust me, I'm not exaggerating. I was so tired all of the time and was grateful when he started sleeping a three-hour stretch in the beginning of the night. By his three month birthday, he was sleeping a five-hour stretch in the beginning of the night, followed by several two-hour stretches, and I was starting to feel like a normal human being again, capable of making conversation or at least small talk about the weather One very glorious day, he actually had a 9-hour stretch! And then, as quickly as it started, his sleep started to deteriorate until, by his four month birthday, he was back to waking every hour. My husband and I were victims of the dreaded four month sleep regression (insert scary music here)!

We tried many different tactics - letting him cry for a little while, rocking instead of feeding, playing soothing music, playing white noise, massage and book before bedtime. You name it, we tried it. I read so many sleep books, which was difficult to do in my sleep deprived state. And finally FINALLY, just when I thought I would never sleep again, something worked (or maybe he just mastered rolling both ways and it had nothing to do with any of our tactics but I like to assume a little bit of responsibility for his emergence from the dark-side) and Oliver started sleeping longer stretches again.

So now fast forward to two weeks ago when my little boy, who is now almost eight months old, went from waking up for two feedings a night (I'm still breastfeeding) to not needing any nighttime feedings and sleeping from 6PM-4AM. I patted myself on the back although I had really done nothing to bring about this change but I felt very accomplished. At 4AM, I would feed him and then on some very rare wonderful days, he would go back to sleep. But I was even happy with these 4AM mornings. That's how desperate I had become

Then four days ago, Oliver decided to wake up at midnight. I let him cry for twenty minutes (our new policy to see if he can work it out himself. If he can't go back to sleep himself, I go in and feed him) and then fed him. The next night he slept until 4AM again so I decided to chalk the previous night up to an anomaly that would never happen again. How wrong I was! In the past two nights, Oliver has woken up at 3AM and 2AM respectively. So what has happened? Is this an 8 month sleep regression? Has this happened to anyone else?? If so, what did you do? Please help!