sleep...again

This lack of sleep thing with Penny is just getting out of hand. In short, I was feeding her around midnight and again around 5 or so. Then she got sick a couple of times, and it eventually went back to her waking and wanting to eat about every two or three hours. Yesterday I kind of reached the breaking point. I felt like I was losing it--I was so exhausted and just feeling pretty depressed. I know a few people who have older kids who still do not sleep through the night so I realize that my situation is not unique. Nevertheless, I am just beat.

Anyway, in a nutshell that's what got us to the point of trying to do some sleep training again. When we did it a couple of months ago, it was a disaster. That little baby is persistent! She would scream--SCREAM--for hours. Literally hours! It didn't really seem to improve as the days went on either, so we kind of gave up. But...we decided it needed to be attempted again, and sooner rather than later. So last night, we set some ground rules that Bill would go in to her (with my gentle prodding to get out of bed because the man can sleep through most anything), at increasing intervals. I would not feed her until 5AM. She actually slept pretty well; for the first time in a number of weeks she slept until about 2:30. Bill went in every few minutes. At one point he came back to bed to inform me that she was actually STANDING in her crib. She has been trying to pull herself up for a couple of weeks, but that was the first time she's been successful. It was as if she were saying, "Fine. If you won't bring me the boobs, I will walk to them!" We got a pretty good chuckle out of that somewhere around 3:15. She finally fell asleep around 4:00. So we were awake for about an hour and a half, but it wasn't as bad as it's been in the past. Rather than screaming, she was just kind of fussing, which is much less anxiety-provoking (or blood-pressure-increasing, or adult-tear-inducing) than constant screaming. She woke around 6:00, and after I fed her she slept until about 7:30.

I am optimistic that tonight will be a sleep-filled night for all of us. Keeping my fingers crossed!