The Night of Misery

I guess every parent experiences this one time or another - for some folks it might be a nightly occurrence. But for the Astle family, it finally happened on Wednesday night. Ellie (our dear, sweet, darling, 4-month-old) had a breakdown. It started out as a fairly normal night, maybe if I had been more in tune with the signs I would have been able to avoid the catastrophe that was looming. But no such luck. I guess I ignored the yawning and tired eyes. "It's only 6pm," I thought. "Surely she's not tired yet." Plus we've been putting her to bed usually around 8 or 8:30pm - so there's no way she would go down now.

Well, I got her down after a little bit of wrangling at the normal hour. But at 10pm the BREAKDOWN ensued. Matt was on duty tonight. (Bless his heart, he actually got home late from work just a little Ellie freaked, and I mean FREAKED, out).

Up to this point, we haven't dealt with anything like it - except after her shots at 2 months - the crying, the sobbing, the sadness. It was the worst experience ever - mostly because there was nothing we could do. We tried everything - holding her, singing to her, feeding her, changing her, giving her tylonel - nothing worked. She just wailed and wailed.

After 1.5 hours, Matt finally decided he would have to sleep in the Lazyboy in Ellie's room holding her as that was the only way to keep her from crying. But the nightlight was right in his line of vision and the light was just too much. So he turned it off. That's when I heard the loudest, most terrifying screams. Ellie went ballistic. I guess she has never been in pitch black dark before and it freaked her out. She screamed bloody murder until Matt speedily turned the light back on and cuddled her very close. After another 30 minutes of similar sobbing, she finally slept. She woke again at 4am, but this time only for a feeding and was pleasant as usual.

And so we survived and we learned some lessons about not putting off sleep. Now I am a paranoid mother. Every sound, every creak, I am afraid will wake the baby and I will have a breakdown on my hands. Ellie wasn't the only one that cried that night. I cried and cried - mostly from the stress of Ellie's behavior, having Matt work so late all of this week, and suffering from major sleep deprivation. Things just sort of came tumbling down. Matt reminded me that this would not be the last time Ellie made me cry. "Someday she'll total your car." "That wouldn't make me cry, it would make me angry" I replied. Still is point is real. I have opened my heart to heartache. Is this what it's like to be a parent?