Sleep

...is seriously lacking at house. Today is day 11 of this new system. And honestly, things are no different now than they were before we changed it. It's taking her at least an hour to go to sleep every time. Nap time (if she even takes one, which she didn't again on Saturday. Well, she slept for 20 min in the car if that counts) is 5 minutes of rocking to drowsy, put her in bed and she walks and laughs and sits up and talks. We leave the room, she stands up and cries. Sometimes throws her paci and dolly then is mad that she doesn't have either one of them. Hm, wonder why that is? Bed time is worse. I don't usually leave the room at bedtime b/c it makes her not sleep well...meaning on the days I leave the room at nap time, she usually wakes up exactly 40 minutes after she goes to sleep. I can't take that chance with bedtime, so I just sit there--bored out of my mind, wishing, praying and dreaming she would lay still long enough to go to sleep. I rock for about 20 minutes...she's typically a little drowsy (not as drowsy at naptime, though)...then I give her kiss and put her in bed. I'll pat her tummy (and/or back as she rolls to and fro) for a few minutes, then I sit down next to the crib. She stands up, walks around, sits up, lays down, rolls around, crawls around, talks, claps her hands, rubs her eyes, I mean everything and anything. Last night I put my hand in her crib and that seemed to keep her laying down longer, but didn't impact her going to sleep any faster despite being e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d. We started rocking at 7pm, she didn't fall asleep until 840. Ridiculous.

Maybe I'm crazy...or maybe I'm wanting to be right (I usually am, you know! lol). But, there is something wrong. By this point in the game, it should be easier. We have NOT rocked her to sleep (well, I did cheat a little yesterday at naptime and she slept 2.5hrs!). She's still waking up during the night. Last night was awake from 3-4am. She finally fell asleep, started crying at 415am. I went in and comforted her (I picked her up b/c she was not stopping by simply patting her), she went right back to sleep when I laid her down. I thought FORSURE she'd sleep until at least 6am (which would have only been 8.3 hrs). Nope. Awake crying again at 5am. Wouldn't go back to sleep. That's not even 7.5 hrs. She was crabby, crying (b/c I was laughing at how cute her "where is" game is! It took her quite a while to stop, too!), fussy--all the behaviors of an overly tired child. I did take her to school today (FOR MY OWN SANITY!). The plan was (and is, I guess) to have her take a nap there. It could go really well--b/c she's so tired--or really badly--where she'll go to bed early and hopefully easily. My problem is that her regular teacher isn't there today (and I thought she was going to be), so that concerns me a bit. But, whatever sleep she gets, she gets. And we'll deal with the behavior when she gets home at 2pm. DH comes home around 4pm, so that's only a few hours of me running solo.

I am a millisecond away from calling the doctor to say, this is NOT working. But, we go back in 10 days and maybe things will change by then. I was thinking while I was sitting in there last night maybe she is waiting for DH to come in and rock her since I've been the one putting her down every time since day 1. My thinking was that I could confidentially tell the doctor that we had kept things the same every night and still no go. But, I think he might try tonight and see if that helps. I don't know...I'm grabbing at straws here, and figure it doesn't hurt to try!