Wrote what's here on Friday morning... pretty sure it's not comprehensive but life is moving on so I figured I'd post it before too many other things came up to post.
Well, I mananged to get more sleep last night, even though Sweet Pea woke up in the wee hours. The Bug slept longer than usual - though sideways all night, no matter how many times I turned her the right direction. It would have been nice if we all could have slept more than usual, but it's a good thing that Sweet Pea woke up because she had to go potty at 5am. Anyway, despite her being awake and talking to me off and on for over an hour, I managed to get more sleep than I have for a while. Yay!
In response to Christina's comment on the previous post, and because I was also thinking of this, because it seems pretty obvious when you read my last post about The Bug often waking up when I to to bed... It has occurred to me many times that perhaps The Bug would sleep better on her own all night. She starts out in the crib, which is in our room, every night. Oftentimes lately she will wake up anywhere from 1-3 times before I get to bed, and if I am planning to go back downstairs I will put her back into her crib when I get her settled. Sometimes I try to put her back in her crib even if I'm already in bed, to see if she sleeps better there, but she knows that she usually comes into the big bed when she wakes up in the middle of the night, so she seems to expect that and kicks and yells if I put her into her crib when she wants to sleep with me. There are other nights when I go up thinking I'll get her back to sleep and then come back down, and anywhere from 1 to 2 1/2 hours later, she's still awake and the rocking chair and crib combination are absolutely a no-go. In those cases the only way I can get her to sleep is to nurse her in the big bed, and then she's there for the night.
Sometimes I think that I should put the crib back into the girls' room and see if she sleeps better in there by herself at night. However - if she doesn't I'd be absolutely screwed the next day, so I'm afraid to even try it, since I'm already running on fumes nearly every day. I guess I'm looking at it wrong, though. I don't need to change everything, do I? I can just try putting her back into her crib every time she wakes up while the crib is still in our room. This actually reminds me of that book I consulted so often during Sweet Pea's extreme sleep difficulty during her two years of teething - "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. One of her suggestions was to come up with a plan, like trying to get her back into the crib rather than the big bed, but only doing that until a certain time, like 2am - after that time, you still have to get as much sleep as possible, so you go back to doing things the way you were just so you can get some sleep. Maybe that's the way to go.
The Bug is more independent than Sweet Pea was at this age, and she may sleep better on her own. But she likes being in bed with us too. I have also theorized that maybe the Tylenol is working, and that's why she sleeps better in her crib at the beginning of the night. Sometimes she wakes up before 4 hours after she's had the medicine, but often she wakes up 4-5 hours after going to bed. Could be the medicine. AND, with her we also have a problem of warmth. She seems to need more warmth than the rest of us at night, but she HATES covers and will kick and scream if anything gets on her feet in the middle of the night. She won't sleep in a sleep sack anymore for that reason, and sometimes even tries to pull the feet off her footie jammies. The best I can do is to put socks on her and if she needs a blanket, I put it over her torso and make sure that it is under her arms, so her hands don't get stuck under it, and that it stops above her feet, so she doesn't freak about her feet being covered. And of course, if she's covered that way, she rolls and the blanket usually comes off. Yeesh.
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Ah, gotcha. I wish I had some good advice, but I don't have any. Cordy liked sleeping on her own, although unless she fell asleep at the bottle, she cried for up to 10 minutes before falling asleep. Once she was about 18 months old, we could put her in her crib awake and she talked herself to sleep happily.
Mira loves co-sleeping, so I have a feeling it'll be a whole new game this time around. I guess the big rule is to make a decision and stick with it - that's the basis of most of the books out there.
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