Sunday, February 28, 2010

sleep.

Sleep has been an incredibly challenge over the last 7 months. We started doing some sleep training a few weeks ago (2/18) and really found something that worked. Each night baby girl would wake up a little less and needed less soothing before falling asleep. Last weekend her sleep got worse again. Her napping is never very good at home with us and we started to wonder if teeth were upon us.

Fast forward to this past Thursday night. Baby girl slept 9 hours straight! I was planning on writing a blog post on Friday about it--how we'd finally had a breakthrough. Friday was a weird evening, keeping baby girl up about 1 1/2 hours past her bedtime. She still slept 6 1/2 hours straight, ate, then went back to bed for 3 more hours. Great news!!!

Saturday night, though...she was up every 2-3 hours. She's inconsolable. With our sleep training, DH* picks her up, soothes her, then puts her back in her crib. He'd do that for an hour, though, last night, with no success--she was still screaming like she was in some major pain. So after awhile, he'd bring her to me to feed her. She's eat, fall asleep, and rinse & repeat 2 to 3 hours later.

Again, we're thinking maybe teeth. She's gnawing like crazy on everything. She's drooling more than ever before. But we also know that her sleeping well at night depends on her taking good naps. She DID take good naps yesterday, though, with horrible results overnight.

I'm writing now because I have to do SOMETHING while DH is upstairs with her. Tonight is a record. We put her down around 6:50 and she's back up, screaming her head off, at 8:45. She's so desperate in her shrieking. I can't handle it. It always makes me cry. She's quiet right now, but I'm guessing DH is still holding her.

I hope she's better overnight during the week this week. This is making the weekends not nearly as desirable...but that's for another post.

*DH does the training b/c we're fairly sure if I went in there, she'd expect to be fed and wouldn't give up until I fed her. And I'd also probably give in before he does, as I know I have something that will ALWAYS soothe her and can't stand seeing her in so much apparent pain when I know I can do something to make it better.

2 comments:

Cassie said...

Oh, I'm so sorry. Sleep training was like that for us with our oldest too -- one step forward, TWELVE steps back. Something was always screwing up our training: teeth, growth spurts, some kind of cold. We've started doing Sleep Training Lite with little Will, with pretty good results. But I know it'll probably be like that with him too -- good, then bad. Heck, it already is. He and I had a rough night last night, too. My husband puts him to bed, but my husband works third shift, so it's all me when he wakes up at night -- and I tend to give in too. We mothers don't like to hear our babies cry, do we?

I hope tonight gets better, and that tomorrow night is even better than tonight!

Andrea said...

Big (((HUGS)))! That's how it went with us too and I couldn't stand the inconsolable shrieking. Sleep training is tough but hang in there and do whatever works best for you. I hope it gets better soon!!