Last Night... Ugh. (Sleep Issues)

Ok, so Jordyn's been sleeping through the night since she was 8 or 9 weeks old. And she's been sleeping 9-10 hours a night consistently for a while now. Which is totally awesome, and yes, I do realize how lucky I am!

Although, as an aside, it's not all that great when I work until midnight, go to sleep at 1 or 1:30, and she's up by 5:15, 6:00, 6:30, 7:00 at the absolute latest. And sometimes after one of those nights, I have to go back to work the following day for another 12-hour day until midnight. So, yeah, on those nights, I'm not so lucky. And while I used to be able to nurse her back to sleep in my bed almost every morning, she only falls back to sleep occasionally now. I try to make up sleep on the nights I don't work and can get a good night's sleep. Like last night. Except last night, it did NOT go as planned!

Backing up for a minute... While Jordyn sleeps great once she falls asleep and stays asleep, getting to that point is difficult, and lately has been getting more so. She went through a phase a while back where she'd fall asleep on her own when I put her down "drowsy. but awake", but that's long gone. I (or my parents) have to rock her to sleep every night. And while that's not so bad (although I *am* terrified of what this is going to mean when she gets a little older), and I actually really like cuddling and holding her while she falls asleep in my arms, she often wakes up as soon as I put her down in her crib. She'll be OUT COLD in my arms, and I wait a while for her to be deeply asleep, and I honestly don't think she could get more deeply asleep than she is, and then I transfer her slowly and gently to her crib... and she opens her eyes, moves around, and starts to cry. It's unbelievable. I mean, she's SOUND ASLEEP. I don't know what it is that wakes her up. It's dark, the white noise is on, sometimes lately I've even tried the heating pad trick to warm the sheet before I put her down (and then remove the heating pad before I lay her down, of course!). It's taking me 3 or 4 times of getting her to sleep in my arms before she stays asleep when I put her down these days. Because every time she wakes up and cries, we start all over again.

I've tried C.IO. I can't do it. I just really, truly can't. When I get to the point where I'm about to start crying myself (usually only a few minutes and/or when Jordyn starts to really scream), I go in. I've tried to not pick her up, but just put my hand on her, rock her back and forth, stroke her hair, sing to her, etc., but it doesn't work. She doesn't even stop crying, much less fall asleep. So then I pick her up. And we start the routine anew.

What to do?! I don't want to - and can't - do C.IO. At least not yet. She's only 5 months, and I keep hearing and reading that 6 months is really the earliest to do sleep training. And I'm most certainly fine with putting it off (I'm just going to need a new excuse to do so once she does hit 6 months!)! And I really don't mind rocking her to sleep (although I'm not sure how my dad feels, and my mom wants to let her cry because she thinks she's "getting spoiled"). I just want to be able to rock her to sleep *once* per night!

So, back to last night... Jordyn fell asleep while drinking her bedtime bottle. Really conked out. So I figured, great, now maybe she'll stay asleep and we can avoid the whole waking-up-when-I-put-her-down thing. But that meant skipping burping her. I tried, by moving her upper body in circles, which often works when she's awake, but I didn't want to pat her back because I was pretty sure that would wake her up. She stayed asleep when I moved her around, but didn't burp. I decided to just try to lay her down, and that if she had to burp, she'd wake up. But she didn't wake up, and I was feeling pretty good about that... until 11pm. I was in bed, about to go to sleep, when she woke up crying. Which she *never* does. I watched her on the monitor, and waited a couple minutes to make sure she was really awake and it wasn't just a sleep cycle thing, but no, she was awake. And not happy.

So I went in, picked her up... and she burped. Twice. So... big fail on my part for skipping the burping! I'm fairly certain she wouldn't have woken up if she didn't have to burp. Now if she'd just gone back to sleep after burping and stayed asleep, I'd be fine with that. But she didn't - now we were doing the whole fall-asleep-in-my-arms-but-then-wake-up-upon-hitting-the-mattress thing - repeatedly - from 11:00 to almost 12:00. I was getting really frustrated, because now we were both awake way too late (I knew this didn't mean she'd sleep later in the morning), and I had two 12-hour workdays in a row ahead of me!

I finally gave up and took the easy way out... I took her into my bed and nursed her to sleep. And we co-slept from 12:00 to 5:25 when she woke up. I was able to nurse her back to sleep until 6-something, but then she was UP.

Ugh.