Sleepless Nights

It’s nice to have everyone relatively healthy again, but the last few nights we’ve had problems with both the girls waking up.  That’s really unusual for Eva, who normally sleeps soundly until at least 7, but lately she’s been waking up crying at 4am, telling Dave “wake” and asking for oatmeal or “Dora”, because she wants to get up.   He’ll drag a blanket into her room and lay down on the floor to try and encourage her to sleep, but it doesn’t always work.  Once he finally took her into the living room and rocked her as he watched a movie.  The distraction must have helped, because she fell asleep within 10 minutes.  It seemed suspiciously like teething behavior to me, so I finally checked Eva’s gums today, and sure enough, those molars that have been half-way for months are trying to break through the rest of the way now.

 

Amanda hasn’t adjusted well to her crib, even for naps during the day.  I usually nurse her to sleep (it relaxes both of us, and has been reassuring for her with all the crazy changes going on).  It’s a real trick to get her into a deep enough sleep so that she won’t wake when I lay her down.  If I do it too soon, she wakes up and I have to start over, and if I wait too long, she wakes refreshed and won’t go back to sleep.  At night she’ll sleep in her crib until about midnight, when she wakes for her first feeding.  I usually bring her to bed and fall asleep nursing, and she doesn’t wake to feed again until about 4.  Usually she just latches on and goes straight back to sleep, but the last couple nights she keeps tossing and turnings, latching on and pulling off, as if she can’t get comfortable.  I think her gums are sore again, since that first tooth insists on taking its tortuous sweet time.  Nothing a little Tylenol can’t fix, if I can drag myself out of bed to give it, and then get back to sleep.  I actually enjoy cuddling with Amanda at night, and I miss her when she’s not there, so I guess that means neither of us is really ready to give up co-sleeping.  I remember how much trouble Eva had sleeping in the weeks preceding major milestones like crawling, and we had already given up co-sleeping by then.

 

Dave is a light sleeper to begin with, and all these disturbances are wreaking havoc with his sleep.  Once something wakes him up, he’s up for good.  He has to go watch a movie to help him get back to sleep, or else he starts thinking about work and ends up even more wide awake.  Sometimes he takes advantage of the sleep interruption to check on the noc shift or just go into work early, since he’s up anyway.  Because of the lack of sleep the last couple nights, he ends up crashing around 9pm on the recliner, or in Eva’s room when he lays down and reads to her before bed.  All I can do then is cover him up with a blanket, because moving him at that point would mean he’d be up for hours.