Well if Ellie has once again found good sleeping habits, Annie has turned into a nightmare. She is driving us all crazy. She used to fall asleep on her own without crying, wake up twice a night to be fed but go back to sleep (again by herself) and wake up around 7am each morning. Her naps weren't very long at all, but she wasn't too fussy with them. And even that I thought was less than ideal because she was still waking at night and not napping long.
Now she's totally worse. She screams at the top of her lungs when we put her down to sleep at night for at least 20 minutes. She's still getting up at least twice a night to be fed (way too much in my opinion). And she's recently been waking up anywhere from 5 to 5:30am presumably ready to get up for the day and screaming when we put back to sleep - even though she's tired she doesn't want us to leave her.
I've had about all I can take. Right now, we've only taken action to solve the 5am problem. The past two mornings in a row we have moved her down to the basement in the pack n play and let her cry there while the rest of us sleep. Perhaps some would think that mean, but honestly, I don't. She's totally fine, she's not hungry, she's in a safe place and she eventually falls back asleep. I know many parents can't bear to have their children cry. I am not one of those parents. Babies cry. That's just how it is. They cry. They cry when they legitimately need attention, but they also cry for no good reason at all. I respond to cries that merit my attention, to fill needs that must be met. But I can't hold and coddle Annie all of the time. None of us will ever sleep or get anything done if I did. So I let her cry. Though I understand others may feel differently. I'm just glad that we have a three level home, so we can actually put her in the basement and not hear her upstairs.
But I don't want this to become a pattern. We do need to figure out a better system. I'm not sure what it is yet. But we'll come up with something. And eventually Annie is going to be older and sleep better at night. Right now though, I admit I am really disliking this baby stage. It's a good thing it only lasts a year!
2 comments:
Don't wish for her to grow up too fast... you'll never get that 'baby' year back and it passes all too quickly!
At 6 months Andy used to cry an hour and a half to go to sleep at night. And it would last seven days. Then he would get sick or we would have visitors and we would have to do the whole thing over. Sleeping is so hard. She will change as she gets bigger. We had to let Andy cry again a few weeks ago and it wasn't as bad. They get the hang of it eventually. Lucky you have the big place. We have nowhere to hide the screaming child here. Hang in there.
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