Such Stuff As Dreams are Made On...

...And our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Yep. You guessed it. I'm complaining about not sleeping again.

I've been working on sleep training (lite) with C. No matter how hard I try, I just can't let her cry it out. Maybe after a few more months of no sleep, I'll change my tune. But for now, I'm just working on keeping her on a regular schedule of naps and a routine at bed time, hoping it will fall into place eventually. 

She goes to bed every night at 7:30. At 7:00, we start the wind down routine with a bath and lavender lotion. Then on go the footed pjs and the sleep sack and we snuggle in the rocking chair with her paci and her lovey for story time and a song while she drifts off to sleep.

Easy right?

Nope.

Around 8:30, she squirms and wiggles and rolls over and cries. It's time for a bottle. Then we sit in the chair and rock and rock and rock until her eyes flutter to sleep.

9:30 or 10:00 and she cries as if awakened by a nightmare. I pick her up, wrap her in a fuzzy blanket, and rock her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until she relaxes in the comfort of my arms, breathes out deeply, and she sleeps.

She sleeps hard. So hard that I watch her tiny chest move up and down on the monitor just to make sure she is still breathing. And I like to think she would stay this way, BUT, her next dose of medicine is at 11:30. So I wake the finally sleeping baby for a little formula with her meds, a diaper change, and more snuggle time until she sleeps. This time is much harder than the last. The wake up call is uncalled for and it throws off the rest of the night.

1:00... 2:30... 3:30... 4:45... then I am awakened for good at 7:00 with tiny fingers poking me in my eye and pulling my hair. I guess I should mention that somewhere among the hourly wake up calls, I give up and put C in bed with me, hoping she will sleep better if she is near me. Sometimes I am lucky and we sleep for three consecutive hours.

Once upon a time, C was a great sleeper. Never all night long, but usually only one wake up around 3:30. That, I could deal with. This new schedule is. killing. me. slowly.

There are theories. She is teething. She is too excited about crawling to sleep. She has separation anxiety from me. I attempt to diagnose the situation. But then I remind myself that it won't be this way forever. That I will blink and she will be too big to rock. She won't need me to rub her back until she falls asleep. She won't snuggle her tiny nose into my chest. There will come a time when all her troubles can't be solved by a lullaby. So I embrace the joy disguised as exhaustion. I celebrate the memories disguised as obligation. And we rock and rock and rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until all is right in her little world. 

For an hour or so at least.