Evolving Sleep Patterns

Sophia was sent to bed at eight…
*Thump* *padda padda padda* *Click* I heard her get out of bed, run across the room, and turn on the light. For a short time she played with toys, and then she went a step further…I heard the door open. I waited and could hear her just standing there for minutes, then she leaned forward and saw me. She smiled until I told her “back to bed”. I’ve never seen a smile disappear so fast. I made her so sad. I tend to do that A LOT!

That was ten days ago. Now she seems to fall asleep quickly but then wake up just before five thirty every morning in anticipation of Kurt’s alarm clock. She goes back to sleep around seven and will sleep until ten thirty if I let her. Sometimes I do just that. It’s nice to get a few things done in the morning without having to dance around her, or I’ll just sleep in myself.

Why is it that no matter how tired my kid gets she never falls asleep in public?

No, Sophia doesn’t have jaundice nor has she been smoking dried banana skins. Not that I know of anyway. She has been incredibly mellow for the past couple days though. Mellow, even for her.

The day before yesterday I spent the morning running errands. Sophia became frustrated with getting in and out of the car so I took her to the park to burn off some energy before doing some grocery shopping. She went to the play equipment excitedly but once on it she just stood there like a bump as kids made their way around her. She would wander around the park a bit, then climb on the equipment again, and just stand. I chalked it up to not being fully recovered from her cold. We didn’t stay very long.

Yesterday morning she woke up crying as she did everyday that she was sick. After about five minutes, she went back to sleep for an hour then cried again. I got her up at eight, gave her milk, and made breakfast as usual. She didn’t touch her breakfast.

It was supposed to be my cleaning day so I zoomed up and down the stairs gathering stuff together. Sophia got upset because she could keep up with me so I sat with her and read one of the books she always carries with her. After the third time through the book I told her I had to go clean the house. She wasn’t happy.

It was only 10am and she looked tired. Her tantrum seemed to me like a cry for a nap. I picked her up and put her in her crib with her book. She protested for about five minutes and then either sat quietly plotting my demise or fell asleep. It was completely silent until about three, but even then, I only heard a couple tiny sounds that didn’t seem like a fully awakened toddler.

I had left her there all day with the assumption that she must have needed the sleep, but at Kurt’s urging I got her up at four thirty so that she would still sleep at night. I opened the door to a fully awake toddler, laying on her back, and reading her book. She cuddled with us the rest of the evening. She wasn’t interested in playing at all.

Kurtie gave me most of yesterday off. It was nice, but today the light sleeping princess woke up too early because of Kurt opening a frozen shut front door followed by pounding on the doors of the truck outside. I’ve had nothing but screaming for an hour. At first, I tried to put her back to bed but that wasn’t working out so I decided that it would be time to get up. That didn’t work either. She kicked and screamed up a storm while I tried to get pants on her. I decided to let her go pants-less and I had her follow me around the house while I got dress and she screamed. I put her back to bed. I don’t want to jinx things and say that she may have gone back to sleep, but it is quiet in her room at this moment. This is me keeping my fingers and toes crossed that the rest of the day isn’t filled with screaming.

Before the whole ER and 911 fiasco Sophia had a pretty regular bedtime and wake time. She was doing well with naps and typically only woke up once during the night. That’s all gone to shit now. I’m not actually sure if it’s the hospital visits that did it or if it’s the teething. It could be the combo. Anyway since Kurt’s been home this whole week he has told be a number of times to go to bed earlier since I wasn’t getting much sleep since Sophia had got into the new habit of waking twice during the night and remaining awake precisely at the butt-crack of pre-dawn (5:30 am), which has forced me to take a nap sometime during the day.

Last night, knowing that I would be getting up to drive Kurt to work (no use disrupting a disrupted sleep schedule to visit daddy in jail for a DUI since he’s still taking painkillers) I went to bed at nine. The darling angel had gone to bed at 6 since she was dead set against a late afternoon nap. She woke up at 11:30, then again at 2:30, and a third time at three in which she decided it was morning time. I of course stayed up – I have no choice. I rocked her, nursed her, then finally I just placed her in the spare bed and laid down beside her. I think she went back to sleep around four. I put pillows around her and went back to my own bed. At 4:50 the cat thought it would be a good idea to tell us it was almost time to get up – he was gingerly placed in the garage by yours truly. 5:30 Kurt’s alarm went off and at 6:20-ish I got to wake the baby so that we could drive Kurt to work.

We are a grumpy bunch. Kurt went to warm up the car and I followed him putting his lunch in the car so he didn’t forget. “Now the light won’t go out,” he complained. “What light?”

“The light, the light,” he says pointing to the light that comes on when we open the car door. I reached in and flipped the switch from the middle setting to the “off” position and it went off. I put it back to the middle and it was back on since I had a door open. I slammed the door and the light magically went off. It was a little like the time a few years ago when he complained that I had too many red sweaters on the drying rack I use for things I don’t want damaged in the drier. Well, my red sweaters took all the space on the rack and there was no room to hang his motorcycle T-shirts. I told him to stop buying so many red sweaters for me.

There was another incident at Christmas time when his mom wanted to go to the mall to exchange the sweater I get her for the next size up. We arrived and Kurt announced that we only had fifteen minutes to spend there because he had to go pay a bill before the office closed for the day. His niece and sister wanted to shop around a bit so I suggested Kurt just leave us all at the mall while he runs his errand. “What? Do you want to spend all day here?” Umm no. He was insistent that there was only one way to do things, his way, the way that was stuck in his mighty melon head. We must all stay together and therefore we can only spend fifteen minutes in the mall. Ugg! I finally convinced him that he could go run his errand and meet us at the food court in an hour.

More recently I’ve been driving Miss Daisy eerr Mr. Kurt around and he insists I must take the route he would drive. I admit his routes are probably shorter and *maybe* faster (one can never tell in this area), but I’m the one driving and I do know where I’m going! So shut the hell up already!

Hhhhmm I think I got off on a bit of a tangent. I need a nap.

This morning I woke up gushing with extra milk.  I must have fed Sophia from the wrong side during her 3am snack.  I had a hard time going back to sleep after she ate then I woke up around 5 and couldn’t go back to sleep.  By six I was in pain but I didn’t pump cause I figured she would wake up soon.  The later it got the more I thought, “oh, she’ll be up any minute now”.  She finally woke up at a quarter to seven and I was quite ready to feed her.  Unfortunately she was more interested in looking at the night light beside the bed.  Ok fine.  I covered her face and turned on the room light then turned off the night light.  Now pay attention kid!  Nope.  The little shit just wanted to play with her newest toy – her damn feet!

Monday last week at Sophia’s doctor appointment he checked her ears and throat and all is well.  Friday and Saturday were actually her worse two days although she was a little grumpy on Sunday.  By Monday, all she had left of her cold was a runny nose.  The doctor said that we could always give her some baby Tylenol because she can get the same achy pains adults do with their colds. 

While we were in the office, we told the nurse about Sophia’s napping habits or lack thereof.  There have been times the child has stayed up for 12 to 14 hours straight, or only had a couple ten-minute naps during the day.  She might fall asleep when nursing but as soon as I set her down she’s wide-awake, and I’m not about to hold her ALL DAY LONG.  Car rides usually work but we didn’t invest in one of those detachable infant carriers so she wakes up when the ride is over and we actually have to go in the store or back in the house. 

I use a front pack when I go grocery shopping that she’ll sometimes fall asleep then too, but getting back into the car wakes her up again.  I know those detachable infant car seat carriers make things easier when at a restaurant and just going in and out of the car to run errand all over town without disturbing the baby, but then you have to carry the weight of the seat and the child and that gets HEAVY!  I’d rather carry a 15-pound baby against my body than a 15-pound baby with a 10-pound seat by hand.  Those seats can be expensive and aren’t used for very long anyway.  Sophia will be able to sit up on her own in about three months (probably less) so she’ll be able to sit in restaurant highchairs and shopping carts soon besides, her lack of napping is more of a problem on the days that I stay home. – I haven’t figured that one out either.

I would wear the front pack around the house but about the only chore I can do with it on is vacuum the house and we don’t have much carpet.  I’ve tried hauling laundry up and down the stairs with her in the front pack and I do ok, but I don’t think bending down to put clothes into the drier is good for my back, and folding laundry would require much longer arms.  The same goes for doing dishes and loading the dishwasher with her attached to my front.

So the doctor gave us a printout that was meant to help parents get their baby to bed at night, but he said we might be able to get some tips from it for napping.  Because that day Sophia had not slept at all during the day we took the opportunity to use the suggested techniques to switch her usual bedtime from 10pm to 8pm.  This special technique was basically – put the kid to bed and let her cry herself to sleep.  Oh GOD was it hard!

It said to develop a bedtime routine that starts about thirty minutes before bedtime and that the baby needs to associate the crib with falling sleep instead of falling asleep in my arms.  She also needs to learn to calm herself to sleep without me holding her, swaying, driving, using “white noise”, standing on my head, or juggling axes lest she later learns to wake up in the middle of the night without needing to be fed and require me to juggle the axes some more.

The routine I started was to change her diaper, put her in nightclothes, close the curtains, put some of her baby things away for the night, turn on the nightlight, and offer to nurse her even if she just ate thirty minutes ago.   I nursed her until she showed her usual sign of not being hungry which is to attach and detach A LOT and look up and smile at me.  The looking up and smiling at me is what made the next step so incredible difficult because she was being all cute and sweet and here I am about to do something that I know she’ll hate.  I put her in her crib still awake like the magic doctor sheet said to do.  I kissed her and told her goodnight.  She smiled and cooed.  Oh why do you have to make it so difficult?  I made the “goodnight” brief just like the magic doctor paper said and I left the room.  She quietly entertained herself for a few minutes and then the crying, screaming and crocodile tears began. According to our directions, we were to check on the baby every five to fifteen minutes and talk softly to her without any harshness in our voices.  Visits should be brief and boring.  We could give her kisses, hold her hands, etc.  But under no circumstances were we to pick her up (well ok maybe if there's a fire we can pick her up).  We were to only be in the room for a minute and you know that Kurt was very precise following each guideline to the letter.  I pointed out that our directions gave no time limit for the whole process.  I mean at what point each night do you just give in and start over the next night?  Because she eats about every two hours during the day we decided if she isn’t asleep in that time I could pick her up to feed and change her.  Every ten minutes we took turns to go check on her.  On my turns, Kurt came with me because he didn’t trust that I wouldn’t pick her up and only stay a minute.  The torture ended after an hour and a half when Sophia threw in the towel. 

I didn’t follow this technique with naps because to try it four times a day would just drive me insane and I think it would just be too much.  Despite me not changing anything during the day, Tuesday was a breeze.  She took three good naps (each lasting about an hour) and fell asleep within thirty minutes that night.  Wednesday she took three ok naps (each only lasting about 30 minutes) and took an hour and a half to fall asleep that night.  Thursday was a no nap day and it took an hour and a half to get her to sleep that night.  I blame Kurt for falling for the old, “I need a drink of water” routine.  On one of his turns to check on Sophia, he checked to see if she was hungry by letting her use his pinky as a pacifier.  He didn’t realize that’s all she was doing was using it to calm herself.  I tried to nurse her and knew right away that she wasn’t actually hungry but I sat with her anyway just as much for her comfort as my own.  Friday and Saturday night we only had to check on her once on each night.  Sunday night she actually prompted me to check the time when she started to fall asleep while nursing – it was 7:30!  Not only was she right on cue but that night she slept right through the night for NINE AND A HALF HOURS STRAIGHT!!  Monday night and tonight she fell right to sleep on her own.  Each night the screaming a wailing became more fussing than calling out to save her life which was nice, and with exception to Saturday she did pretty well with naps too.

I’ve decided that if I stay up really late I won’t have to wake up as many times in the “middle of the night” to feed the baby. Today is Kurt’s first day back to work, so last night we went to bed at ten instead of popping a movie in to watch. I was staying up anywhere from eleven to one am, so I only had to feed Sophia once in the “middle of the night”. – three am. Now, if I keep with Kurt’s bed time schedule it’ll be two to three times a night.