Somehow Squeakles is sleeping and we are so, so grateful for that. That's not to say he doesn't still wake up in the night, sometimes up to four times. But there are nights he doesn't call us at all, and when he does, it usually only requires a short visit to his room. Very occasionally he has a dream and calls me to tell me things like how "Weeble was not doing a good job of not putting batteries in her mouth" or crying about how Koji (our cat) "broke the remonitor [thermometer] - why did he break the remonitor!?"
In contrast to her brother, Weeble has been a fantastic sleeper right from the start. She slept so well as a newborn that I kept asking the doctor if she was ok. When she was about eight weeks old she switched her sleep schedule to include sleeping at night, and from that point on, we all slept through the night. It is truly mindblowing.
But a little over a week ago her lingering cold moved up inside her sinuses and she has been so stuffed up she can hardly drink or sleep. When she tries to drink from the bottle, she can't breathe out of her nose, and so she starts gasping and sputtering. Typically we can only manage to feed her two or three ounces at a time before she gets frustrated or tired and pushes the bottle away. And sleep is a complete disaster. But the sleep is compounded by a second factor - teething.
It was clear that she was cutting her top teeth, because starting a couple of weeks ago she started slobbering all over everything and soaking the front of her clothes. She also started runnng a low grade fever that would occasionally go up to 103 in the middle of the night. She became truly miserable at night. She would try to sleep, but was just clearly uncomfortable. And we have been trying everything - rocking, bouncing, singing, movies, baby Tylenol, the nasal aspirator, and saline drops. And finally, sleeping on top of our chests.
Daycare sent her home last Thursday and then we just kept her home ourselves on Friday because her fever was up to 103 during the night. Because of this, her sleep schedule has been really messed up. Lately she dozes off a little before 8 and then wakes up sometime between midnight and 2:30, crying and no longer with any intention of sleeping. When J and I have tried to fight through it to get her back to sleep, she just cries and cries and cries. And obviously we don't sleep either. So for the past few nights we've been trading off Weeble care, and therefore alternating whose turn it is to sleepwalk through the day.
Last night I was finishing up a presentation I had to give today, so I (stupidly and naively) told J to go to bed when it was about midnight, telling him that I was "sure I could bounce her to sleep". Clearly I was dreaming when I said that. By 1:30 she still wasn't going to sleep and I was getting not only tired, but a little panicked because I had to get up at 6:30 and wanted to be at least a little rested for work. But Weeble wasn't thinking about that.
So I confess, I put her in front of the tv and went to sleep. Yes, that is what over a week of sleep deprivation will do to you. I didn't just leave her of course - I put her swaddled in the bouncy seat and I lay down next to her on the couch. I got about an hour of sleep like that before I heard her crying and I suspect she'd started to drift off and then woke up again. I tried bouncing her from my supine position on the couch, but she just cried more. Eventually I had to pick her up and lay her on my chest and bounce around like I was a living bouncy seat, while she alternated between crying and putting her head down to go to sleep. By 4 am she was finally out and so was I. Only to be awakened by the alarm at 6:30.
But the good news is that she has a new front tooth now. (Well, kinda. So far it's just a shiny spot on her gums.)
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