A new leaf...

Well, it's Monday and I'm going to try to have a positive attitude. One would think that this is a fairly elementary decision, but not lately.

I actually purposely didn't blog on Friday, because our overnight prior was so miserable that I feared I would be compelled to impale myself on a knitting needle if I dwelled on it any further. And then there was the weekend. (I'll just get this out of my system and then move on to that "positive thinking" thing...) All of a sudden (and she's not sick anymore) I can't get Anne to sleep more than 2-3 hours a stretch at night. And that would be for a "long stretch." Most of the time, she's awakening anywhere from every 20 minutes to once per hour.

So, I finally made the decision to move her to her crib, at least for the beginning of the night. She's nearly 4 months old, plus I was getting the feeling that we were disturbing her when we'd go up to bed. It actually went pretty painlessly. She seems to like it in there. I'm trying to start a little "routine" of changing her, wrapping her up, and then rocking her while I nurse her prior to putting her down. I also stopped swaddling her. She was really fighting the arm swaddle, so now I just use the swaddle to wrap her legs up, like a wearable blanket, and leave her arms out. She seems happier and isn't jolting herself awake when you put her down anymore. She's actually easy to get down.

But just wait 20 minutes, and everything is different. She's up, and crying. I'll let her cry for 5 minutes, but no longer than that. Then I go up and soothe her back to sleep, and I know that the problem is that she can't get herself back to sleep. But what else can I do? I know that the sleep gurus tell you "not to treat your 4 month old like a newborn." Point taken. But a 4 month old is still a small infant, and I want her to feel secure. I'm not just going to leave her to cry.

I duke it out as long as I can getting up to nurse and soothe her back into the crib, and then I bring her into our bed for the remainder of the night. At least this way, we're getting some sleep.

So, what I've decided is that I'm not going to talk about baby sleep anymore unless it's something positive. The situation is what it is, I have a baby after all, and getting upset about it all the time is only serving to make me even more miserable. I need to keep my spirits up in order to stay strong. Worrying and fretting and crying isn't helping anything. I just need to deal with it as best I can. I have a sleep book coming from amazon, and I'll employ any gentle suggestions that I can and deal with what happens. I will not despair, and will hope for a better tomorrow.

So, that's that. But to give you a glimpse into my nighttime life right now, I offer the following. Friday evening I was home, since I was literally too exhausted to go to my belly dance class. There's no way a girl can hip drop when you can barely climb the stairs. I got Anne down and managed to knit for a short spell, then we headed up to bed. Shortly thereafter, we heard the siren song of Anne's wail coming from the nursery, so I went in. I nursed her and was rocking with her in the chair in there, both of us dozing off when suddenly I hear crying.

I jolt and check Anne on my shoulder. She's sleeping. I hear crying again. Well, that's just silly. That can't be! Given that I'd only gotten about 10 hours of sleep cumulative for the entire *week* I assumed that I was hallucinating. It must be like when I'm confused to hear crying in my dream because I think I'm holding Anne, when actually that's Muffin, my stuffed dog. Convinced, I start to put Anne in her crib when I realize that I totally screwed up my analogy and plus I still hear crying. This can't be good. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I stagger over to Hank's room. Sure enough, he's awake, and crying. And why would that be, you ask?

Because he has a terrible stomachache. Since people who don't poo are susceptible to such phenomena. Thus, a second mini nightmare ensues wherein we have to carry Hank to the toilet and try to convince him to poo. When even stabbing gas pains won't get the child to poo, you know you've got a problem on your hands.

*sighs*

He did finally poo the next day, but only under extreme duress. Ok, off to employ some positive thinking...