Party at the Crib

For the past two months, my darling daughter has been waking up at night. Sometimes this is once a week, the past two weeks, it has been three times too many.  The time that she wakes up varies as much as when she wakes up. Usually though, it's when I'm done for the day and getting ready for bed. I usually let her squawk for a few minutes. She does wake up in the night, let out a few cries, then goes to sleep. So I just wait to see if she's grunting out a fart or if she is really awake. 

If I realize she is really awake, I hurry, brush my teeth, wash face, and get in there before it turns into screaming hysterics. I pick her, sit in the rocking chair, and nurse her. There have been a few rare nights where she goes to back to sleep and I get to go to bed. Most times, she nurses and then proceeds to either play or scream. Mostly it has been the latter. Now mind you, my daughter is now 9months old. I was pretty sure this stuff only happened in the first few months. I endured this with my son and my husband found me many times in tears in the nursery, rocking him while he just screamed.  

I have also ended up in tears many times with my daughter. 

It wouldn't be so bad if she was just screaming and crying relentlessly. She has started grabbing anywhere that skin is showing and pulling at it until she loses her grip, scratching in the process. I keep her nails short, but even short nails hurt horribly. 

This whole endurance test has lasted up to 3hours. There have been two mornings (that I remember) where I was still awake when my husband woke up to get ready for work. 

The worst part is that she doesn't sleep in after being awake for 3hours in the middle of the night. Knowing you are going to be getting only 3-4 hours is a horrible reality sometimes. 

This past time, I just gave up, turned the light on and let her play on the floor of her bedroom. I sat in the rocking chair and dozed lightly while she threw her blocks across the floor. After half an hour of this, she crawled over rubbing her eyes.  I shut the light off, nursed her and she promptly went back to sleep. 

Half an Hour. 30mins. 

Not 3hours of intense mental breakdown and hearing loss. 

I felt so stupid. Why didn't I do this sooner?? Why was I torturing myself this way, by making her do something she just didn't want to do, but that I wanted her to do so desperately? 

This was a simple lesson to me as a parent. That despite everything that we may try to make our children do, they are their own person and have their own ideas and will. All we can do sometimes as parents, is just step aside and be there when they need us. 

At least now I know how to get more sleep at night and how to end it peacefully without tears. 

The Co-sleeper and the Crib-sleeper

The biggest difference between my children is where they sleep. This isn't how I wanted it to be, I had envisioned either a huge family bed or them in their own beds.
 I started them both out the same way. For the first few weeks, they both slept on my chest. Then, when they learned how to nurse laying down, they both nodded off with my breast as a chin pillow. I have many many fond, shadowy memories of them that way. Then, slowly I moved them into the mini co-sleeper I have attached to my bed. My son never lasted long in it, so it always ended up being a place to store my water bottle, books, and other things.  My daughter slept soundly in the co-sleeper, sometimes through the night. Nap time, I nursed them both to sleep on our bed, then silently, slinking away I left them there with pillows on either side. At 6 months, I started putting them to sleep in the crib in the nursery. With my son, he would wake up around 11pm , I would get him and nurse then slip into milk-drunk slumber. My daughter would wake, nurse and then proceed to scream for an hour with me on the last nerve by the time she fell back to sleep.
My son has since been in the habit of sneaking out of his bed at night and into ours, oddly in the same routine we had when he was in his crib. When I was pregnant, I tried to break him of this habit. Mostly because he was a restless sleeper and I was worried he would slap, kick, and roll onto the new baby. This worked to no avail. It ended up with several nights of him actually waking completely and then hiding under the dining room table.
I am not a fan of 1am hide and seek.
So, I gave up in favor of sleep.
I had the baby, and things went according to above. Only with her, he was in the bed between my husband and I, while she lay sleeping on the safe side of me. There were a few things that changed quickly. She learned how to roll over quickly and creep. She fell off the bed twice in her trek towards my husbands alarm clock. Then she started being more restless at night, either waking and nursing constantly or just waking and crying. Needless to say, she took to the crib quickly. No disturbances, no snoring, and quiet. So apart from a few nights where she wakes due to teething or gas, she sleeps in her crib. While my son is snuggled up against me every night.
I'm sure this will change when she is no longer in her crib. But only time will tell that.