Sleep rant

 We went to storytime at the library this morning, as we do most Monday mornings.  Calla fell asleep in the carseat on the way home, as she does on most Monday mornings. Sometimes I can sneak the carseat into her bedroom, turn on the fan, shut the curtains and she will keep sleeping (sometimes for almost 2 hours, which is UNHEARD of, because usually she doesn't sleep longer than 30 minutes in her crib). But today she woke right up and started screaming, so I took her out and brought her into the kitchen to start making our lunch. Meanwhile... apparently Addie , I later learned, was in the bathroom giving herself a sponge bath (?!) . Calla kept crying, so I figured that she was still tired (obviously! she had only slept for 5 minutes) So I brought her back into her room and put her down in her crib to try to take another nap. She rubbed her eyes, yawned and then proceeded to cry for 15 minutes or so while Addie and I ate our lunch. Her screaming and crying renders me dysfunctional. When the crying finally stops, I find myself breathing and thinking that I had probably been holding my breath for a long time. My body gets so tense and I am not capable of doing anything else. And if I try to do something else (like take care of my other child), I am snippy, short and have very little patience.

Calla finally stopped crying as I was putting Addie down for her nap and then I started writing this post to blow off some steam.  Five minutes into typing she woke up screaming again. This time I went into nurse her, figuring that maybe she was hungry and that's why she hadn't been able to stay asleep before. She ate a little bit and then fell asleep in my arms. The minute I lay her down in the crib she started screaming again. I let her cry again though, knowing that there was nothing else I could do. She wasn't hungry, wet, dirty and was VERY tired. As of now, finally, she is quiet.

We've been struggling a lot with Calla's sleeping for the last month and half. Ever since she was sick with RSV and I got rid of her pacifier (what the hell was I thinking?!) things haven't been the same. Maybe her sleep habits would have changed anyway, but I'm blaming myself.  She has difficulty falling asleep on her own and was waking up a lot in the middle of the night screaming, she mostly naps for only 30 minutes  and seems to need a nap every 1.5 hours. I've been reading a lot of different sleep training books and know that she is just very overtired at times and that is what creates this vicious cycle: the more tired she is, the less she sleeps and the more trouble she has, which then leads her to be more tired. 

In one of the books I've read, the Dr. talks about how important it is to establish naps at home in the crib and that sleeping "on the run" is the equivalent to eating junk food.  I believe that it is better to have longer stretches of sleep in a crib as opposed to little spurts of sleep in the moving car. But how the hell am I supposed to juggle a three year old who wants to get out and do things and a baby who needs to nap every 1.5 half in her crib?!!! Fortunately, Addie has been going to school 3 days a week from 8-3 (she actually requested to be able to stay at school longer) so this makes it easier to help Calla's routine out on those days. But Mondays and Fridays are tough.

I remember a couple months ago feeling like things couldn't be any better. Calla was nursing great, sleeping like a champ, becoming very alert and was always happy. Addie was handling everything well, was very helpful and didn't seem to be having any adjustment problems. Pride goeth before the fall, or something like that.  Calla's crying has increased, my patience has decreased and Addie's whiny-ness  and tantrums have increased as well. These are all linked and related and I blame it all on the pacifier, or rather my decision to get rid of it in the first place!

*I should say, to those of you who are thinking that we should just give the pacifier back, we did. While she seems to enjoy playing with it and bopping it through the bars of the crib, it doesn't seem to provide that soothing that it used to for her. The love is gone. But, I guess I will be glad about that someday.*