Exhausted

DH and I were both sick. I woke up in the middle of the night (when DD woke me) with an upset tummy (very queasy). DH let me nap a bit on Sunday morning and I felt a little better. Ate a small dinner on Sunday. Still felt fairly bad on Monday, so we stayed home from work, as DH started feeling queasy on Sunday afternoon. I pretty much cared for DD from then on.

This weekend DD started shrieking like a crazy woman when we try to get her to go to sleep. It's always been a battle, but we figured we'd wait until we were feeling better to work on it. We also had a routine that had been working for us. All that has been thrown right out the window. We've been up every hour overnight with a shrieking child. Every time we try to put her down...more shrieking. Once she wakes up after we put her down, it takes her another hour to calm and fall back asleep.

I can't even explain how exhausted I am. I almost passed out leaning on her crib last night, trying to get her to sleep because I was sweating and still feeling somewhat queasy. We've spent many hours in the rocker/recliner in the living room, in the rocking chair in her room, with me or DH standing over her crib, and with her in bed with us. We don't sleep well when she's in bed with us because we're so afraid we'll roll over on her. It's to the point where I'm dreading going home and want to just stay at work today so I don't have to deal with putting her to sleep. I also don't want to go pick her up and hear how awful she was about sleeping today because I know the sitter will start to push letting her cry it out on us again, which we're not comfortable with, especially now that she's started this shrieking business.

I don't know what to do. I'm at my wits end and am on the verge of tears every second. I've been reading different methods...the one that speaks most to me is the Baby Whisperer...she doesn't advocate letting the baby lay and cry. Might try it. I'm just feeling very lost and like I've screwed my baby up royally by letting her sleep on us so much--now she doesn't know how to sleep on her own. We've swaddled her until now and it's worked okay...but now I think we need to get her out of it--that could be why she's waking so often now.

Of course, all of this could just mean she got whatever bug DH and I had and once she's feeling better she'll go back to sleeping just fine. Either way, it was time to make some changes, but I really didn't want to be forced into it in the middle of a week when feeling awful. How am I supposed to function without any sleep?