Rough Patch

I'm at my wits' end. I just don't know what to do about Jordyn's sleep, or rather, lack of sleep! She seems to have decided that night time is just not the time to sleep. And neither is day time, at least, not any or much more than it was back when she used to sleep at night.

She was such a champion sleeper - 9-11 hours a night. For so long. And I got SO spoiled!

The thing is, I don't even know *why* she's not sleeping. It could be because she's getting over a nasty cold, although I think she's nearing the end of it. It could be that she's teething. It could be that she's nearing a developmental milestone - crawling. It could be all of the above. A couple of people have said that maybe she's having a growth spurt and she's hungry, and that I should give her a bottle when she wakes up at night. Personally, my gut instinct is that it has nothing to do with being hungry. She hasn't eaten at night in *months*, and I don't want to start a thing where when she wakes up at night, she expects a bottle. Especially a bottle that she doesn't need!

It's not like she wakes up, cries, and just needs some soothing to fall back to sleep. That I could handle much better, just being awake for 10 minutes or so to help her fall back to sleep, even a couple of times a night. But no, she wakes up, cries, and no amount or type of soothing does a damn bit of good! She'll scream bloody murder until I pick her up. That seems to help most of the time, except for the times that it doesn't... And even when it does, as soon as she settles and maybe even falls halfway to sleep leaning against my shoulder or chest, she wakes up completely and starts screaming again the second I try to lay her back down in her crib. If I wait for her to fall completely and totally and deeply asleep, I can then lay her back down... but she ends up waking back up maybe 1-3 hours later. The only thing that helps either of us get any even halfway decent sleep is to bring her into bed with me. Which I know is creating a monster. But desperate times call for desperate measures! If it's bring her into bed with me or be up for hours in the middle of the night, guess which I'm gonna do?!

And when picking her up doesn't soothe her? When she keep crying and screaming no matter what I do? No matter how I hold her, what I sing to her, whether or not I pat her tush? I try changing her diaper, just in case being wet is bothering her (it never seems to make a difference). I don't talk to her, turn on the light, or make eye contact. Is she hot? Is she cold? Is she uncomfortable in some other way? I rock her and shush her while we both cry, and try to find something - anything - that will soothe her. I bounce her, hold her one way, hold her another way, sing, shush, stay quiet. Walk around. Give her the wubbanub pacifier, which she inevitably just holds, shakes, and chews.

Usually giving her tylenol helps her sleep, if only for 2-3 hours. So does that mean she's in pain? But then, wouldn't she be in pain during the day, too? She's fine during the day, if a little tired. Pretty much her happy little self. So it's kind of hard to believe that she's in that much pain at night, but who knows. I know she's been getting some low-grade fevers with this cold, and I think that may be making her uncomfortable enough to disrupt her sleep, and that may also be why tylenol helps. I have no problem medicating her if she's in pain or has a fever, but I don't want to just medicate her to sleep, and sometimes I don't know if that what I'm doing.

On Sunday night, I got to my parents' house after work at 12:45am. I got ready for bed, and she was awake before I got into bed. I had to sleep in the twin bed in the room with her, since my aunt was in town and sleeping in the guest room. I literally dropped to the floor from standing when she woke up so that hopefully she wouldn't see me and would just fall back to sleep. Which meant I couldn't get into bed until she fell asleep. So it's like 1:30am, she's awake but not crying, and I'm laying on the floor hoping she won't know I'm there. I thought about trying to pull a pillow and blanket down from the bed and just sleep on the floor, but I think that movement would've woken her up, and I couldn't reach them without getting up, anyway, which would've defeated the purpose. So I caught up on Words with Friends while laying on the floor willing her to fall asleep so that I could go to sleep. I mean, this is crazy, right?! She eventually started crying pretty hard, so I got up and picked her up. We were up until 3:15.

Even when she's sleeping, she's restless in her sleep, at least some of the time. You can tell that she's uncomfortable in some way. I don't know if it's a fever, teething pain, that she's trying to get into a different position... Sometimes I think she wants more freedom of movement than the sleepsuit gives her, but then when I take her out of the sleepsuit, she doesn't sleep, I think because she has *too much* freedom of movement! Or just not enough of the cozy pressure that the sleepsuit gives her. I don't know.

Monday night I decided I *was not* going to bring her into my bed. Uh huh. It was a horrific night. Once when she was actually sleeping, I decided to sleep on the couch in the den because I thought maybe she'd sleep better if I wasn't in the room. She didn't, not really. Tuesday night I did bring her into my bed, and we got *some* sleep. I think I need to just decide to screw trying to figure out her sleep, and just do whatever works (i.e. bring her into bed with me) until I figure out some way of doing something - anything - with consistency. Which means we're back to me needing a new job, and that's not in the near future.

We spent the last few nights at my parents' house, Sunday night because I worked and they babysat, and Monday and Tuesday because we were there for the Passover seders, and it just made sense to stay over since we were there pretty late. Plus, my dad continues to offer to help me with Jordyn, yes, even in the middle of the night! Usually, I can't bring myself to wake him up when he's sleeping. On Monday night, when I slept in the den, I had the monitor on out there, and when she woke up and I went into her room, I forgot to turn the monitor off, and my dad heard her screaming. He came in and offered to take over, and I let him. It was 4:45am. I slept on the couch, on and off, until around 9. That, I think, was my longest stretch of (not even very good) sleep in I don't even know how long! This morning, when she woke up for the last time around 6:30 and didn't fall back to sleep nursing, I brought her in and woke up my dad at almost 7:30, and he took her so I could go back to sleep until 9, when I had to get up and get ready for work. The thought of having to get through a 12-hour workday until midnight, and then likely going home for yet another sleepless night made me willing to wake up my dad, bad as I felt about it.

On Monday afternoon, she was so tired from being up most of Sunday night and only taking a 30-minute nap earlier in the day, she fell asleep (of course nursing, in my bed) around 4:00, and slept til 6:15. We were supposed to start the seder at 5:00. I hadn't even taken a shower yet, and was still in my pajamas. My sister popped her head in at one point, and I told her to just have the seder without us, because sleep was the priority for both of us. I tried to sleep, and I might have dozed, but I didn't really get any good sleep. Either she'd move or I'd hear everyone in the kitchen/dining room before and during the seder. I was sad to be missing it, but I wasn't willing to move and wake her up, plus, I couldn't leave her sleeping on my bed even if she stayed asleep, anyway. I showered really quickly after she woke up (my aunt came and took her out of the bathroom where she was in her bouncy seat while I was showering to make it easier). We made it to the seder just in time for dinner, which could actually be seen as pretty good timing. :)

It's just so damn frustrating. I just don't know what to do to help her sleep. I feel like we've taken one step forward, a hundred steps back. It's absolutely maddening. Again, if she'd just fall back to sleep with a little singing or shushing and patting, fine. Even if I had to pick her up and rock her to get her to fall back to sleep - also fine. But this being awake for hours in the middle of the night, trying everything under the sun to get her to sleep, with no success? Maddening! Frustrating! I'm most definitely very sleep deprived, but I'm also just emotionally spent. Just D.O.N.E.

I'm SO GRATEFUL for the help my family has been lately, especially my dad. He's even told me to leave Jordyn at their house one night and sleep at my own house so I can get a good night's sleep. Except I don't think I would (get good sleep, that is). I'm just really not ready to be away from her overnight yet. I told him my compromise was I'd sleep at their house, too, but with earplugs, and he could have the monitor in his room and deal with her if/when she wakes up. So that might happen on Saturday night, since I work twelve-hour days both days this weekend.

This whole sleep deprivation thing is making me rethinking having a second baby. *Not* that I was planning to do it anytime soon, but it's been in my mind lately that I really do want to have another child. And then this sleep regression happened, and being so totally exhausted and barely being able to handle one child has me thinking, "no way!" on a second one. But we'll see what happens. Hopefully Jordyn's sleep will turn itself around soon.

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In other news, my brother is out of the hospital, and he's doing ECT. If you're not familiar, that stands for electro-convulsive therapy. In other words - shock therapy.Yes, really! It means he doesn't have to take lithium, and he's willing to do absolutely *anything* to be off of lithium. So far, so good, but it hasn't been very long and he's only had three treatments. We'll see how it goes. I really hope it works for him and he can maintain stability!