Apparently teething made my child very anxious about going to bed. It used to be a very simple, pleasant experience, involving laying down, nursing, and falling asleep to a lullaby. She now cries when I walk into the room with her. Putting her on the bed is guaranteed to make her really wail, which doesn’t cease until I uncover the boobs, whether or not she’s actually hungry. And then the falling asleep part, after the nursing and paci-placement, now involves a lot of grabbing for mommy<\/i>. Clearly I am her security blanket, and also clearly she is very anxious – this is not the pain wail of actual teething, this is the, Noooo, I don’t want to!<\/i> wail. I don’t mind the cuddling; I do mind the wails and kicking and back arching when I try to cuddle her – it puts me in a pretty sour mood to start the night off. She was doing so well before the teething… we were making progress, she was calm and would lay down and fall asleep with just some back patting. These constant setbacks make me want to scream.<\/p>\n
I constantly wonder if I’m doing this wrong… or, no, that’s the wrong word. I don’t think there is a wrong. I wonder if I will regret my choices. That’s the worst part, the self-doubt. I wish there was some manual, some foresight: if I do X, Y will happen.<\/i> But babies are all different.<\/p>\n
And of course just when I think I’ve made up my mind, that something has to change, she falls asleep and sleeps just fine. I’m sitting here scratching my head. Why did it have to take 2 hours of refusing-to-sleep and a meltdown to accomplish this today? Yesterday she went to bed no problems and stayed asleep for 2 hours, then another 2 hours.<\/p>\n
Didn’t I mention the waking every 2 hours at 10 months old is getting, well, old<\/i>? This is by far the main reason she is still in bed next to me – at least then I don’t recall how often she wakes, it’s brief and doesn’t wake me. Having to get up out of bed every 2 hours in the middle of the night? Not cool. We do have a timeline for this: when (if) I get pregnant again, she will need be able to sleep at night without my constant attention. (Daddy will be the one being sent in at that point, and we all know how well they handle broken sleep.)<\/p>\n
But I admit that I know I sleep better when she’s next to me. Apparently she<\/i> has become my<\/i> security blanket. I believe this is the main reason I haven’t tried any major change that might actually solve the sleep problem… I know that whatever I do is probably going to require consistently putting her in her own bed. I’m still not ready to commit to that. Which is fine. (I think.)<\/p>\n
Clearly sleep is our Thing We Struggle With. Some people have problems with feeding; some with illness; some with meeting milestones. Ours? Just sleep. And if the sleep thing just isn’t “great” by anyone’s standards, I wish I at least believed in my decisions enough to say, “Fuck it, I’m doing the best I can.” But I don’t. And that sucks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apparently teething made my child very anxious about going to bed. It used to be a very simple, pleasant experience, involving laying down, nursing, and falling asleep to a lullaby. She now cries when I walk into the room with her. Putting her on the bed is guaranteed to make her really wail, which doesn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3554"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}