Natalie’s Mouse
So we’re in the midst of a hellishly bad sleep phase (please, please, please let it be a phase). No sooner than I hit publish on my last post (where I foolishly wrote that Natalie’s sleep was undisturbed despite teething) did she wake up crying. That night was by far the worst night we’ve ever had. I tried to get her back to sleep for 2.5 hours, then Chris got up and drove her around in the car for another hour until she finally fell asleep. Since then she has been waking up in the wee hours (between 4 and 5 am) and having a hard time settling back down.
One sleep problem (in addition to teething) we’ve identified is giving her infant motrin in the middle of the night. Our hypothesis is that the sugar keeps her awake. She stops crying once we give her the medicine, signifying that her teeth no longer hurt, but then she enters this weird wired state where she looks like a red-eyed insomniac zombie.
Walking, or rather, working on walking is the other thing keeping Natalie awake. Apparently working toward developmental milestones interferes with babies’ sleep. I seem to remember a similar problem right before Natalie started crawling. Thank goodness for Ask Moxie (my favorite parenting site) and her post about babies practicing walking and not sleeping, which verified our suspicions.
So last night continued on the bad trend…Natalie went to sleep fine initially, did okay going back to sleep when she woke up around 12, but then woke up again at 4 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. If we weren’t so tired it would be almost comical…she gets up on her hands and knees, then flops herself face-down on the bed trying to find a comfortable position. Often, she will fall asleep for 30 seconds, then wake up and try to reposition. Chris got her to sleep walking her, only to have her wake up as soon as he put her down. Around 4:45 am, I decided to give up and just get up with her. So we went into the hallway and Natalie gleefully walked (holding my hands) up and down the hallway several times. Then we went downstairs and read books for a while. Then she got fussy and started rubbing her eyes. Back upstairs we went…I tried nursing her in the glider—no sleep.
Then it hit me—her mouse! (You know I was going to get to the subject of this post eventually.) I received this mouse for Natalie at my baby shower (thanks Judith, Jess & Janine!). A while back I started giving it to her while she nursed, because otherwise she pinched me. Really hard. So I wanted her to have something in her hands, plus I like the idea of her having a lovey. But lately, while nursing to sleep, she’s been throwing the mouse, then sitting up and crying until I get up, locate it in the dark, and hand it back to her. I tried holding on to it so that she can’t throw it, but then she got frustrated and cried anyway. Since it’s rather annoying to go through that several times before she falls asleep, I decided to not give her the mouse in the first place. Bad choice, it seems.
Anywho, back to early this morning…after being up for over an hour and not getting her back to sleep by all the usual methods, we gave Natalie her mouse and she nursed completely calmly and went back to sleep for another 3 hours. Maybe we’ll start calling the mouse “mighty.”
Hopefully, Natalie will grow more teeth and learn to walk. Soon. Did I mention that she’s gone down to 1 nap a day? Sorry to ramble on and on in this post…it’s hard to think clearly while sleep-deprived…
Natalie with her mighty mouse:
