sleep issues

Winnie has decided (again) that she doesn’t want to sleep through the night. Every night, like clockwork, she wakes up around 3 a.m. and cries and screams and becomes generally hysterical until she hears me coming in. As soon as she hears my footsteps in the hallway, she magically composes herself and by the time I open the bedroom door, she is standing in her crib watching for me and says, “Hi, Mommy!”  It’s hard to be mad, but it’s definitely frustrating.

 

The last few nights, realizing that this is becoming a pattern, I’ve tried to ignore it. I really have. She can carry on for a VERY long time. I start to worry that maybe something is wrong. Maybe she has a dirty diaper. Maybe she is too cold. Maybe she will wake up Thor if this keeps up (luckily, he sleeps like a rock). I definitely can’t fall asleep with the amount of ruckus that she makes. She truly sounds panicked. For some reason, hearing someone scream, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” in desperation is as bad as, if not worse than, hearing a helpless newborn cry. So each time, I have relented, and each time I realize she has duped me again.

 

She’s also gotten more resistant to going back to bed. Until recently, I would nurse her (more on that later) and she would go right back down. Now she will nurse but then want to get up and run around the house, go say hi to Daddy, sit on the couch… you name it. And if I’m extra lucky, Shortcut will decide she needs to be let out while all of this is going on. So here we are, with a willful almost-two-year-old, and I think we are going to have to start our millionth round of crying it out. Someday, I’m sure, this too shall pass.