Once Sophie had been on antibiotics for a few days her sleep improved dramatically. The past three nights she’s slept through the night with nary a wake-up. It has been wonderful. Blissful.
This leads me to suspect that she’s had the ear infection since we came back from Texas, poor thing. And we just didn’t catch it until it got so bad she was running a raging fever. She’s been cranky and sleeping poorly all this time and we just didn’t know why. Yikes!
Of course even after Sophie’s sleep calmed down, Bella was still having issues. Even though she isn’t ready to give up her afternoon nap, I’ve decreed that it must be so. (This means I hve to be on the alert though for if I just put her in the other room and let her read books, she will as like as not lay down and go to sleep even if at the beginning of nap time she’d declared that she wasn’t tired. So much for my idea of quiet time!)
Not only was she popping up many times after we’d tucked her in; but she was starting this new routine where she’d be up every half hour or so from three am on. I’m thinking it wasn’t unrelated to Sophie’s disturbing her sleep. But it had to stop. Dom and I were both getting to our breaking point. All our exhortations were for naught, however.
And then Saturday night I refused to get Dom up when she insisted that only he could help her. Instead I carried her to the office and let her fuss there until she calmed a bit. Then I explained that Daddy was tired and needed sleep, that everyone was getting sick from lack of sleep and that she needed to learn how to let us sleep. (This particular wake-up was the third or fourth of the night and I think was about her barrettes needing to be adjusted and it was following several other wake-ups for pretty spurious causes like maybe she couldn’t find her sippy cup in her bed or “I’m having trouble sleeping.” The next morning Dom and I both reiterated our pleas; but I think it was the fact that before dinner she wanted Dom to take them for a walk and he said he was too tired. I took them instead for a very brief jaunt.
So perhaps seeing that her night wake ups were costing her quality time with Daddy in the day time, last night at bedtime she announced to Dom that she was going to not wake him up at all. And you know what, she didn’t. Both girls slept through the night. (I know it’s Lent; but I still have to exclaim a little Halleluia!)
The only child who woke last night was Ben. And well, he was running a fever in the middle of the night and by the time I’d changed his diaper, taken his temperature and dosed him with Tylenol, we were both wide awake. I took him to the living room where he played for fifteen minutes or so and then nursed until he fell asleep. He didn’t sleep well the rest of the night either. (He was fine all day today so I have no idea what that ever was about. Just one of those things babies sometimes do I guess.)
I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to deal with Ben. He’s now waking up every two hours all night long. So even if Sophie and Bella aren’t getting me up, I’m still not feeling rested at all. Maybe now that they are setting down he will too. I can only hope.
I’ve never been good at managing my babies’ sleep. It only seems to even out after the first year. Many sleep experts will blame the fact that I nurse them to sleep. But it really is the easiest and pleasantest way to manage babies. And I don’t have much patience or luck with reading the signs and lying them down tired but awake to calmly drift off to dream land. I don’t seem to be able to read those signs reliably until the children are much older. And by then the patterns seem to be set and I don’t really know how to reset them.
That is funny. Our library had a special Dr. Seuss exhibit up and they were asking people to vote on their favorite Dr. Seuss book. My husband said his was “One Fish, Two Fish”. We got it when my oldest was just about 2 and she used to love to hear it. One of our favorites had to do with a creature named Clark found in the park in the dark. She could recite it when we got to that page and it was so much fun to hear it. Certain phrases from it are now part of our family vocabulary. If you think that one is long and weird, have you read Fox in Socks? That is, without a doubt, one of the hardest books to read aloud—ever.
I think the thing that draws children to Dr. Suess is his mastery of rhyme and rhythm. And though I do sometimes find it a bit annoying, it’s always fun to me to hear them reciting phrases from the books.