The Kiddie that Never Sleeps

Gillian has largely been a self-soothing baby; she started putting herself to sleep at a self-selected bedtime at about seven weeks old, and though she didn't sleep through the night yet, she didn't usually cry when put down to sleep and her night wakings were very manageable.

Until a month or two ago. We went to visit family, and Gillian quickly got accustomed to my feeding her right away when she woke up (to keep her from waking up the whole household). When we came back home, I intended to get her sleeping through the night again and then move her from her bassinet by our bed to her crib in her own room.

Gillian, however, had other plans. She liked waking up in the middle of the night and (I flatter myself) having Mommy all to herself in the quiet wee hours of the morning. And, hours it became. She would wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I would attempt to soothe her and put her back into her bassinet. She would wail. I would wait it out for a few minutes. She would appear to go back to sleep. I would fall asleep. Within 5 or 10 minutes, she would jerk awake with the realization that she had not had the meal she had come to expect, and express her outrage. Repeat, repeat, repeat every 15 minutes until 5:00 or 5:30 when I would give in or just fall asleep with her lying next to me, nursing at will.

Side note: I'm not a big fan of co-sleeping (for myself and mine) because I am a pretty sound and occasionally violent sleeper. Plus, when something in my sleep disturbs me, I simply write it into the content of my dreams and continue on. Rolling onto my husband (who is 10x my baby's size)? Not a problem: I simply shift gears in my sleep and dream that I am flopping over onto a raft after a nice swim. I don't want to do that with my baby.

Anyway, things continued to disintegrate. Gillian quickly acclimated to our new routine and wanted to play for the couple hours in the middle of the night. She would cry (or sleep, cry, sleep, cry) if laid in her bassinet, but if held, she would smile and coo and pull on my face and generally enjoy the time while being charming beyond belief. I mean, she almost had me--I was almost ready to accept this as my lot in life. But she was also waking at other times in the night, usually around midnight or 1:00 a.m. and sometimes at 11:00 p.m. too, so I was getting less sleep than when she was a newborn.

So, now she's in her room and the last few nights have been brutal . . . she wakes a lot and cries out (and it does kind of kill me not to just go in and feed her, since it's what we both want, but not a good habit for her sleep). She has gotten better at putting herself back to sleep, and I think she's getting used to not feeding all night long, but oh my goodness, if this continues . . .