Runnin' On Empty

I've always been a night owl. Even as a child, I'd hide a flashlight under my pillow and read long into the night, well after my parents had gone to bed. I love the quiet solitude of the middle of the night.

I think that, at the whopping age of 9 months, the Bug has inherited my tendencies. Night times are a horror show around here. The Bug will go to bed at 7 p.m. without a fuss. She's nothing like Boo was - Boo flat out refused to sleep on her own. I always had to take her in to bed with me or rock her until she was completely asleep before lying her down in our bed. She never once slept in her crib. She'd scream and cry until she puked. Until she was 15 months old and we moved into a new house, she slept with us. Every night, from birth.

The Bug was quite happy to go to bed in her little bassinet. I could put her down drowsy but awake and she'd just go to sleep. What a novelty! She was waking every couple of hours to nurse and I'd generally put her back in her bed, until the 2 a.m. feeding. Then she'd just stay put with us until morning. It was fine. She slept, I slept, it was all good.

But now. Good lord. She still goes to bed like a charm, around 7 or 8 p.m.. She usually wakes again around 12 or 1 a.m. to nurse. That's when all hell breaks loose.

She doesn't want to sleep with us at that point. She twists and squirms and pulls at me and screams bloody murder the entire time. So, fine, back into the crib she goes. And she's fine for a few minutes, just long enough for me to get under the covers, get comfortable and start to drift off. Then, wham! She starts screaming again. Stands up in the crib and shakes it. Then we begin this hours-long dance of me laying her back down, covering her up and rubbing her back for a minute, until she's quiet. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's making me nuts. Because I don't to to bed until midnight or so and I'm spending half an hour nursing and then another hour or so trying to get her back to sleep, I'm averaging 3 - 4 hours of sleep a night. I've resorted to taking a nap in the afternoon, when both girls are napping. This means that my house is even more messy than it normally is, because that's usually when I get the bigger cleaning tasks done.

It's also making me very, very crabby. I've never really needed 8 hours of sleep, but I do need 5 or 6. My body feels like it's been run thru a clothes mangler. I've had a cold for weeks and I'm sure I can't shake it because I'm getting so little sleep. It's also making me very short-tempered with Boo, who is at peak two-ness. There are a lot of tears of frustration around here lately and they're not all the toddler's.

I'm at my wits end over this. The screaming means that I can't move her into Boo's room yet - that's all I need, two babies up in the middle of the night. I hope this is just a phase that the Bug is going thru because I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take.