The other day I thought I had found acceptance. I thought I had relearned the lessons I learned first in labor: Don't fight it because fighting makes it hurt more and last longer (or suck more, in this case). Let it wash over you in a wave and eventually it will pass.
Turns out I had just had an extra half hour or so of sleep the night before and as a result was feeling a bit more chipper that day.
But I went to bed the night before last feeling rather accepting; thinking, "well, there's really nothing I can do about this, I need to just live with it because bitching about it makes it so much worse." The Bug did wake up when I went to bed that night, and kept me up until 2am, but then she slept until 7am.
That would have been utter heaven for me if Sweet Pea had stayed asleep. In a freakish move, she woke up at 2am just as I got The Bug back into her co-sleeper. She said she needed to blow her nose, and then she needed to get up and go potty. I took care of both situations with her without waking Slipshod or The Bug, and we went back to bed. Just before 4am Sweet Pea woke me out of a dead sleep asking for some soy milk to drink.
I begged Slipshod to get it for her and he agreed and questioned whether I was really letting her have soy milk rather than water in the middle of the night, because our usual policy is to only let her have water once she has brushed her teeth. I was too exhausted to even remember that. Slipshod, however, is tremendously lucid while he's sleeping. Yes, he was sleeping when we had this conversation. He agreed to go get Sweet Pea the drink, then rolled over and continued to sleep. So I dragged my weary ass out of bed and downstairs, taking Sweet Pea because otherwise she would have burst into loud wails, thereby waking The Bug. I figured she must be pretty thirsty to ask for a drink at 4am so I gave her half a sippy cup full of soy milk. After three sips, she was done - put her cup on the bedside table, laid back down, and we both went back to sleep. The Bug woke up at 7am. Sweet Pea slept until 9am.
Last night, The Bug woke up a whole bunch of times. In order to get any sleep myself, I've had to nurse her in bed laying down and then move her later once she falls asleep and I wake up and realize she's asleep. Last night every time I moved her she woke up, so I just left her in bed with me too. Sweet Pea kept rolling over and bonking The Bug in the head with her arms/elbows/hands/head because her usual MO is to roll until she's right up next to me, and with The Bug in between she couldn't get there. But as long as she was in bed with us The Bug slept a little better than she has been.
I, on the other hand, slept the best I could on my side in about 8 inches of space, with my back up against the co-sleeper.
I know I'm bitching a lot here, but really, can you blame me? Both my girls have done this to me - sleep through the night for months as young babies and then totally turn the tables on me. I really don't know what's going on with The Bug either. We have given her Infant Tylenol before bed and during the night, and it doesn't seem to help. I figured she must be in pain, you know, to suddenly start waking up like this overnight, but wouldn't you think Tylenol would do something if pain were the problem? I have tried different jammies, putting her in her sleep sack, not putting her in her sleep sack, one blanket, two blankets, etc. Nothing. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this sudden change.
I give up. I just hope I can get through how ever long this is going to take on so little sleep without one of the girls getting hurt due to me being less coherent than usual.
As difficult as this is, I think it would be slightly easier if we didn't have Slipshod's entire maternal family coming over on Sunday to celebrate Christmas. Yes, I invited them. And I'm looking forward to seeing everyone and having a family potluck here. HOWEVER, our house looks like a hurricane went through right now, and I'm not getting much done around here with all these sleep issues going on - I'm trying to nap and go to bed with the girls when I can. Sometimes I just can't, though - last night I stayed up late washing all the dishes that had been piling up, because I was sick of having to wash something in order to cook, and sick of having no counter space.
We also need to Christmas shop, which we do largely online, and I prefer to do after the girls' bedtime so I can actually concentrate. Which is hard to do when you've barely slept in a week.
Tomorrow is also Sweet Pea's last art class, which requires me to get up ass early and take a shower before Slipshod goes to work. I will probably need to get up around the time that I could finally be getting a couple Zs. Oh well. Whaddaya gonna do.
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2 comments:
Perhaps, Buggy-girl is going through a growth spurt. That can sometimes affect sleep. Many sympathies....we have been there and survived. :)
I have been considering other options like, as you say, a growth spurt (lordy knows she's nursing enough for about three babies right now), and also a developmental leap. When Sweet Pea went through big developments like rolling, crawling, pulling up, etc., she lost a lot of sleep because she felt she had to wake up at night and practice. ha ha! I actually read about that in a book before she did it so I recognized what was going on with her. The Bug does roll a lot now, though not from tummy to back; maybe she's trying to figure that out.
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