An Awful Night!

Every now and then the girls remind me that they are still babies and we end up with a sleepless night.

I have to say that for the most part they are both good sleepers, and the crying it out thing works great. They rarely cry for more than a few minutes. I know when something is different with their cries. Sometimes they wake up and I give them some time and they go back down on their own. Normally its just a fussy cry that goes in and out in intensity, like they fall asleep in between sobs and wake up suddenly and cry again.

Other times are like last night. Last night I had NO CLUE. As a parent these moments are difficult because I feel like I have a pretty good handle on both my kids and know what they want. Not this time.

Matt and I went to bed later than planned. I was busy cleaning and then we just go to talking so we finally settled down about 12:30am. When I closed my eyes I felt the tiredness from the day hit me, and my body felt heavy and my head started to get all woozy. I was exhausted and did not even realize it.

About 15 minutes into that feeling I hear Hannah start crying. No, screaming. I gave her about 20-30 minutes but it is not like her to last that long in the middle of the night and this was a different cry, so I went in to rock her.

She seemed to settle down ok while I rocked her and so I rocked and dozed and patted her for about 45 minutes. I laid her back in her crib and she was asleep. Whew. Time for bed. I stepped out of the nursery and the minute I got back to my bed she started again. This time I thought "maybe she had a dirty diaper and I did not realize it? or she is teething and the tylenol has worn off" so I decided to go through the whole gambet. I got her up, changed her (only wet), gave her tylenol, and gave her a bottle. She drank the bottle and fell asleep. I laid her down in the pack n play (at about 2:45). Finally, time for me to sleep. She slept for about 30 minutes and then was screaming like mad again. As I said, this is not like my Hannah, so I went and got her again. I did not know what to do. She would not stop screaming even though I was holding and rocking her. I brought her to our room where it was dark and thought she would settle down with me. Nope. She just kept screaming. Poor Matt ended up going downstairs to sleep on the couch because it lasted so long.

I turned on the baby channel which plays lullabies at night and let her sit up to see if she would stop crying. She did briefly, and she liked my cup of water I let her have, so I did get a smile out of her once or twice, but it returned to her crying some more. I ended up singing to her with the light of the tv on while she laid on my chest for about 30 minutes and she calmed down. I woke up with her laying on top of me around 5am and put her back in the pack n play where she slept until about 7:30. Needless to say I was really tired, but I have no clue what triggered this from her. She acted fine today. She never ran a fever, never pulled on her ear, ate fine, and had good diapers. Who knows? Maybe she just wanted some attention since I have not seen them much the last few days.

As I said, they are almost 11 months old but sometimes they remind me that they are babies and I am taken back in time to the first few crazy sleepless months.