Sleepy Head

We have been having some issues over here at my house. Some sleep issues. Now I know that several of you would say that I deserve it. After having months of restful nights when Miss A slept for at least ten hours in a row. But it's payback time. She has consistently been getting up at least once every night. What's worse it's usually at around 4:00 AM. Yuck. The worst part about that hour or the next three is that they are so close to morning. You have already been sleeping a long while, but not long enough. When you try to go back to sleep your body is confused and thinks that you've slept enough and it seems to take forever fall asleep again. If she must get up, any hour earlier than 4:00 AM is preferred.

On a few rare occasions she has decided that 4:00 AM is a totally acceptable time to get up. I strongly disagree. I am firm and insist that she, at the very least, must stay in her bed. She will chatter away to herself and play with her stuffed toys, aquarium and crib toy. Eventually she falls asleep again. I then have no idea how much sleep she actually got since I usually fall asleep despite still hearing the chatter coming from her room.

Some of you may be surprised to learn that I am still breastfeeding. Not a lot. Just first thing in the morning, before and after her nap (if I'm not working) and before bed. Oh yeah and IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT if she gets up. Since she went for months sleeping through the night, not nursing at all I know that she can do it. Therefore I can't say that hunger is the reason for her waking. We've even tried giving her a bottle in the evening to help 'fill her up' in case she's just not getting enough from me. (Breastfeeding so infrequently has definitely decreased my milk supply)

I know that her waking up could be due to any number of reasons. Growth spurt. Teething. Nightmares. Who knows what the reason is. I do feel lucky to have had it so good for so long. However that doesn't make it any easier to deal with now. In fact it may be harder because I've grown accustomed to getting more sleep.

Now here is the part where I ask the internet for advice. Or suggestions. First let me start by telling you that I don't jump out of bed and run to her room the moment I hear her cry out. So those of you in the cry it out camp can be assured that I wait to see if she'll just fall back to sleep. On the other hand sometimes I think I have unintentionally shot myself in the foot by letting her complain too long, in turn giving her too much time to fully wake up, making it harder to get her back to sleep. This usually happens when I am so tired that it takes me forever to drag myself out of bed. At those times I am having a groggy argument with myself – “Get up, she's crying. Don't bother, she'll go back to sleep. She's not going back to sleep, get up! I don't want to get up.” etc. Also, once when we tried the whole 'fill her up' with a bottle before bed she peed so much it leaked out of her diaper and onto her pajamas and I'm assuming that she woke up because she was wet. So what do you think? Is there anything else I can try? Or should I just suck it up?

And I will wrap up this gripey little post with the most hilarious picture I have ever taken of Miss A. This was taken last Friday morning. She usually gets up in her own good time except on Fridays and Saturdays when I work in the morning. On those days I often take my camera into her room in attempts to catch the rare sleeping picture. On this occasion she heard me coming in and started to get up. And then I captured this priceless photo of my sleepy headed baby. I have seen her father in the morning with the exact same impression on his face.