It's 6:01 am and I've been up for about an hour and a half trying to get the baby back to sleep.
She used to sleep straight through the night; we had a good three week run, perhaps! It was quite easy to transition her from nightly feedings every two hours to none, too. But, as is always the case with babies, the routine has changed. The past week or so has been a nightmare just trying to get her to sleep before 10:30 and then she wakes up once in the middle of the night, hungry! I have a great willpower, though, thank goodness. Last night, in a desperate sounding plea, Billy told me to just feed her (as Gia had already been wailing with hunger for at least half an hour, which feels like a week in infant-crying-time), but I wasn't about to spend each night until the end of time waking up at 5 am to feed this baby. She's supposed to sleep through the night and that's exactly what I expect to start happening again! No giving in here...
Luckily for me, it doesn't actually take too much to get her to be quiet; it's falling asleep that's difficult (or my ability to wake up enough, myself, to give the right attention to the task). Without fail, the very moment I begin to sing "All Through the Night," a Welsh lullaby I've sung to her since we came home from the hospital, she smiles and shuts right up. She'll generally be quiet for the entire duration that I sing, but that can end up being a lot of singing...singing the same two verses over...and over...and over. After that, I go to 'shushing' her. I just go 'ssshhhhhhhh' constantly while stroking her head and cheeks until she sleeps again. Tonight, I had to give up on the eternal shushing and resort to playing her Pandora lullaby station...which I obviously should have done from the start because here she is next to me...asleep. FINALLY.
I love how the routine is always changing. I'm sure most parents can tell you...it's like a form of torture. You get accustomed to one and it's so exciting, "here's one that works!" and, suddenly, it doesn't and you need to come up with a whole new one.
For Gia, we started out swaddling her. Actually, I started out holding her all night long while she slept (laying, propped up, on my back, arms outstretched in front of me, cradling my newborn, a pillow jammed between the bed and Gia's co-sleeper so she could never fall, and not a millimeter of movement on my part all night, even in my light new-mom sleep)...
...but that's only because we hadn't yet owned the swaddling blanket that actually worked for her (thank you Miracle Blanket!). Anyway...from birth to five months, swaddling worked!
It was wonderful...and Gia could fall asleep during anything and stay asleep as long as she weren't startled.
Then, this past month, it all changed. First, she refused to sleep in a swaddle; she simply struggled to break free. When I finally figured out what she was attempting and released her, she started falling asleep, no problem. Staying asleep was a different story, though, as she'd raise both legs in the air and drop them, startling herself awake with the sound. So, I slipped her blanket under her legs; problem solved...or not. It turned out, she slept much better with her legs actually raised! If I held them way up in the air, she'd go right back to sleep. So, next, I added a rolled up blanket to prop her legs up on...easy! Three weeks later brings us to our current routine...
 |
| *scratch, scratch, scratch* She loves to scrape the mesh after waking, a sound much like nails on a chalkboard when all you want is to sleep. |
First of all, there is no falling asleep to anything nor staying asleep. All stimuli need to be removed and, outside of some soft music or white noise, it needs to be quiet. My night pretty much ends at 7/7:30 pm. Since I get home from work after 5, that leaves a lot of me time (hardy har har).....Anyway, once she's actually asleep (which has taken 2-3 hours of struggling up until I discovered a promising routine last night), I could lay her anywhere in her co-sleeper (it's like a very small crib attached to the side of our bed) and she'll, at some point, scoot herself right into the corner closest to my head. This girl, I swear, is so incredibly crammed right into that corner; her face smashes against the mesh sides (she turns it from side to side, at times, and I don't know how that isn't painful!), her legs splay apart on two completely different ends of the crib, certainly no longer raised up on the blanket, and her body contorts into a twisted pretzel or a scene from The Exorcist. One night, she rolled herself right over onto her belly and slept like she's never known sleep before and, I wonder, if the contortions are just her efforts to turn over in her sleep. No matter, though; it just looks uncomfortable! Yet, before I knew I was pregnant (and, in reality, before the dog slept in our bed), some might exclaim at the odd and uncomfortable-seeming positions I'd twist or scrunch myself into, sitting or laying, so I suppose Gia may simply be the same...
Anyway...I've been up two hours now--not including the separate half hour or so I was awake alone, simply unable to fall back asleep--and Gia will probably be officially awake in an hour or less, which means my time for sleep will officially be over until this evening, at which point, I pray to all the gods of the world that Gia falls (and stays) asleep easily...
So, I suppose this is goodnight! As well as good morning...
Post Edit: Gia woke up "officially" moments after I finished this entry. The light sound of my sheets moving as I tried to lay down were enough to awaken her. Tomorrow...tomorrow...
