Month nine, the sleep battles continue
It’s the same as it’s been for a while now, the battle to get baby to sleep and the battle to keep her in the crib at night are absurd. However, unlike before there’s a serious motivating factor for me to keep her out of the bed and that’s she tends to punch and kick in her sleep now, and will punch when awake to “accidentally” wake me up.
ITMama’s been letting her cry a little longer each day while we attempt to get her to realize we’re not abandoning her, but we reached epic levels where she got so upset she crapped herself and thus that experiment went afoul today. It’s sort of the “cry it out method,” on a limited engagement, which baby can win by crapping.
Crappy sleep better than sleep in crap.
I still have no idea how she figures out when I’m going to bed, because it’s whenever I get settled in to sleep that she gets up with a pacifier malfunction, or freaks out about the radio not playing music, or gets upset for no reason I can figure out.
Her crib now is a collection of things to get her to calm down. From a hot water bottle that we find keeps her calm, to a snuggle toy that feels good on her face and is marketed to help babies sleep, and a blanket because she’s never been able to sleep unless covered. There’s also a thing that feels like human hair in the corner because unless she’s inflicting follicle damage she will not sleep. It’s not the military clear crib we’re supposed to have, but it’s what has come closest to working.
I sit at night before going to bed, and watch her sleep, see how she loses the pacifier, sometimes finds it, sometimes flips over in her sleep. I know that when I stop watching and start attempting to sleep myself there’s going to be crying, or the baby movement monitor will go off for some reason, or I’ll get woken up by some third party randomness.
And if for some reason the camera we’re using for a baby monitor decides to lose stream, well, I’ll be woken to the sound of a baby who sounds like she’s been stuck by a knife.
It’s had its toll on me… being an insomniac was hard enough, being an insomniac who can’t sleep when he finally can get to sleep is gut-inducing.
But the war for baby sleep goes on… very few sleep battles won.
