Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Sleep, Or Lack Thereof

Pumpkin was sleeping pretty well before the Christmas break- she generally woke up once, nursed, and then went right back to sleep. Once, not long before the break, she even slept through until morning after waking up briefly at about 10 p.m. (and not even nursing).

That has all changed now. She's still generally only waking up once, but it is taking us at least an hour to get her back down. Needless to say, I don't really want to be up for an hour in the middle of the night. It is very frustrating- I'll get her basically asleep, put her in her crib, creep out (our usual routine). She'll sleep for a few minutes, and then wake up screaming. The only way we've been getting her back to sleep is to bring her into bed with us. I have no real problem with this solution- she's gone through phases of needing to be held to sleep before, and it always resolves on its own- except she spends the first 30-45 minutes in our bed snuggled up next to me, playing with my hair. I don't sleep well in this situation.

We're hoping that this particular sleep problem has been caused by some combination of the following:

1. The disruption to her routine associated with travel and sleeping in a new place. She often came into bed with us on our trip, because the pack and play in the rental house looked pretty uncomfortable.

2. Lingering effects of jet lag. She only started waking up at her usual time again on Monday.

3. Emotional upset over the return to day care and the drop in "parent hours" that this means. She had a rough day on Monday (one of my mommy friends at the same day care center dropped her daughter off not long after Hubby dropped off Pumpkin, and said she was standing over to the side, crying, while the teacher was trying to coax her to come play- ouch). She did better yesterday, and was almost back to normal today.

4. Gas. If I've learned anything in the last 21 months, it is that gas is always a possible explanation, and some of her behavior last night supports this theory.

Regardless, we're hoping the problems resolve themselves soon, and that we aren't forced to try to fix them. Our only idea involves Hubby going in (she usually wants me, not Hubby) and us listening to her cry (OK, scream) for Mommy for a while. That doesn't sound like fun, and will mean even less sleep than we're getting now.

3 comments:

  1. You have my utmost sympathy! You know we are still in deep sleeping issues with our girl. I don't wish this on anyone, and I hope it soon passes for you guys.

    I'll bet that once she's back in her normal routine, things will get better.

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  2. We're going through the same thing. We didn't travel, but the usual routine was completely disrupted. Add to that the fact that E decided she wanted to sleep in a real bed instead of a crib...

    We decided to just keep putting her back to bed at 5 minute intervals while we were still awake, but I let her sleep with me if she woke up again after we'd gone to sleep.

    It seems to have worked, last night she went down easy and stayed in her own bed, and this morning's daycare dropoff was easy (gave me a big hug then ran off to get her snack).

    Here's hoping things go back to normal quickly for you.

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  3. Anonymous10:17 AM

    I used to blame everything on teeething. I was even a little sad when Mimi got her last baby tooth because I didn't have that as an excuse anymore.

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