That's 3 hours for you non-math majors.
Why won't Audrey sleep? This time I decided to try playing with her when she woke up instead of fighting her and trying to make her go back to sleep. When we fight her, she just screams. If I'm playing with her she's still up until 4:00am but at least she's not screaming.
We put her down around 6:30 last night. She was looking tired, so we fed her and I rocked her for a while. When she was pretty close to asleep I laid her in her crib and when she started to fuss a little, I sat back in the rocking chair and read for a while. She could still see me and was still fussing, so I laid down on the floor of her room and read: it was like she knew I was there but wasn't distracted by seeing me so she laid there quite but awake until about 7:30 when she fell asleep. I thought she might be tricking me, so I laid back down and took a nap on her floor. At 8:00 Gina came in and suggested I go to bed for a while. While I was brushing my teeth, Audrey woke up. She seemed pretty awake so we tried to feed her a little more but she kept falling asleep. However, when I put her back in her bed she was wide awake again. That's when I started playing with her. I sent G to bed and hung out in A's room talking to her and playing with her rubber duck (she loves that duck right now). At about 12:00 she was getting fussy again so I woke G up to feed her. She ate a little then fell asleep again. Again wary of trickery, I read in the rocking chair while she laid there staring at the ceiling. Once she fell asleep I came to bed, but Audrey woke up an hour later. So we played some more. This time she didn't even look tired at all and ate again at about 2:45 - after eating she was wide awake. At 4:00 I finally left her with Gina and went to bed, because I was having breakfast with Kevin and Ken: I thought breakfast was at 6:00 so I set my alarm for 5:15.
When it went off I got up and doubted myself about the breakfast time, so I checked my email: it was at 8:00, not 6:00. Gina had given up trying to get Audrey to sleep in her room and had her in the swing in the living room. She sent me back to bed and I got up at 7:30 to drive to Shari's for breakfast.....the wrong Shari's. I went to 164th while Kevin and Ken went to Orchards. I corrected my mistake and had a nice (if sleepy) breakfast.
Now I'm at the office for a bit. I was able to sleep from about midnight to one, and again from about 5:15 to 7:15. When I left G was asleep on the couch and A was sort of asleep in her swing.
This really worries me bacuse I start a job with set hours on the 2nd. I can't train for a new and complicated job with three hours of sleep. Shit, I can't even make it to the right Shari's on three hours of sleep. And now Gina might go back to work at Columbia part time. We have to make a decision about her work today, and we are both dead tired.
What are we going to do? Why is Audrey's internal clock totally backwards? A week ago she'd take two or three 3-hour naps during the day and then be up until 2:00am when she finally fell asleep. Now she takes a couple of hour-long naps and is awak all damn night.
Why won't. My daughter. Fucking sleep?
Shit.
2 comments:
Sorry, I don't have the magical answer. (Bennett has been a good sleeper since we got past the first couple of weeks, but he still has bad nights once in a while, and I'm already an insomniac, so I can sympathize about the 3 hours--that once happened to me 8 days in a row and I was barely human by the end of it.)
Maybe Audrey is teething? Maybe playing with her when she wakeds up gets her wound up and energized? Are you swaddling her? If not, maybe that would help her stay asleep--Bennett didn't like it much, but our friends' baby can't sleep without it. I'm grasping at straws here, but I'm praying she'll get a handle on the staying asleep thing this weekend so you can start your new job fresh as a daisy.
Sucks to be you!
But for what it's worth, I'll pass on the advice we got some 29 years ago: Carefully choose the first night to "adjust" Audrey's schedule. Put her to be when she SHOULD go to bed. Tuck her in; soothe her; remain calm and unruffled, and then let her scream. But only let her squall for 10 minutes. After 10, go back in to comfort and soothe ... without picking her up ... and wash her face and be kind and sympathetic, but still unruffled. Tuck her back in ... and let 'er scream for another ten minutes. For as long as it takes, every ten, make sure she's okay, and let her wail!
It will be the LONGEST night of your life, and every minute will seem like an eternity, but for us, there was no second night. I think if you remain parental and don't freak out, it ends up be a bit o' kindness in the long run. (and, brother, does it seem like a LONG run!)
There's my two cents worth!
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